Ahmedabad: Villages across India may soon see fewer rotting cow dung heaps, as the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) is setting up 15 compressed biogas (CBG) plants at a cost of ₹750 crore in six states — Gujarat, Goa, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Odisha and Bihar. These plants will convert cow dung into clean energy while providing farmers with an additional source of income, reports The Hindu businessline.
Farmers will be paid up to ₹1 per kilogram of cow dung supplied. Once operational, the plants will need more than 1,500 tonnes of dung every day. The initiative is expected to improve rural sanitation, cut down on foul odours, and promote sustainable development.
NDDB Chairman Meneesh Shah said around 300-400 tonnes of cow dung is already being collected from farmers for existing plants. “We are setting up 15 new plants, each with a capacity of 100 tonnes per day, at a cost of about ₹50 crore each. Farmers supplying dung are being paid up to ₹1 per kg,” he said.
Banas Dairy in Gujarat was the first to set up a CBG plant, which converts dung and potato waste into Bio-CNG. NDDB later partnered with Suzuki R&D Center India and Banas Dairy to build four more plants in Banaskantha district. NDDB has also established a 100-tonne CBG plant in Varanasi, where cow dung is collected daily from farmers’ doorsteps. The plant produces about 4,000-5,000 cubic metres of biogas per day.
Most of the new projects will purify biogas to 95% methane and compress it into Bio-CNG for use in vehicles. A few plants will use the gas for thermal applications without compression. NDDB has signed agreements with several dairies in Gujarat, including Amul, Dudhsagar, Baroda, and Sabar, as well as smaller cooperatives in Valsad, Panchmahal, Amreli, and Surendranagar. Similar partnerships have been made with cooperatives in Goa, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Odisha, and Bihar.
Funding for the initiative will come from NDDB resources and green financing support from NABARD. Suzuki Motor Corporation, having found Bio-CNG from dung to be better for vehicle performance, has already acquired a 26% stake in NDDB Mirda Ltd, the board’s biogas venture.
Earlier this year, NDDB and the Bengaluru-based NGO Sustain Plus launched a large-scale circular dairy programme to install 10,000 biogas plants across 15 states. These digesters are expected to produce 3 lakh tonnes of organic slurry annually, improving soil health and reducing dependence on chemical fertilisers. They will also generate over 7 million cubic metres of biogas every year, providing clean cooking fuel to 10,000 rural households, along with nearly 60,000 tonnes of phosphate-rich organic manure.
