GOBARdhan: National Circular Bioenergy Scheme

Cattle dung and crop waste don’t sound like fuel. Under a new scheme, India is betting big that they can be.

Must Know

• GOBARdhan stands for Galvanizing Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan. The National Circular Bioenergy Scheme under this name was approved by the Union Cabinet on 6 August 2026.
• The scheme has a total outlay of ₹23,731 crore. It runs from FY 2026-27 to FY 2035-36.
• GOBARdhan converts agricultural residue, cattle dung, press mud, and municipal organic waste into Compressed Biogas (CBG), organic manure, and rural income.
• The scheme’s core target is to grow India’s domestic CBG production nearly ten-fold.
• It falls under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.

Good to Know

• GOBARdhan works through six components, sometimes called growth engines.
• Assured CBG Offtake: City Gas Distribution entities must procure CBG to meet a notified blending obligation, in CNG and PNG. This rises from 3% in FY27, to 4% in FY28, to 5% from FY29 onward.
• Stable CBG Pricing: an administered price of ₹2,110 per MMBTU, guaranteed for a minimum of 10 years.
• Capital Assistance: up to ₹2 crore per tonne-per-day of installed capacity, for both greenfield and brownfield projects.
• The remaining three components cover pipeline infrastructure development, credit guarantee support for MSME-based CBG projects, and a CBG Ecosystem Challenge Fund for district-level implementation.

Test Yourself

Great to Know

• GOBARdhan does not start from zero. It builds on several earlier schemes, listed below. Together, they had already helped commission over 200 CBG plants across India.
  • SATAT — Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation
  • MDA — Market Development Assistance Scheme
  • BAM — Biomass Aggregation Machinery Scheme
  • DPI — Development of Pipeline Infrastructure Scheme
  • CFA — Central Financial Assistance, under the National Bioenergy Programme
• GOBARdhan is meant to unify and scale up this earlier patchwork of schemes into one long-term framework, while also mobilising private investment in a circular bioeconomy.
• GOBARdhan is one small piece of India’s much wider bioeconomy. See IndEco0199 — Bioeconomy Roadmap 2035, NITI Aayog‘s national plan targeting a $691 billion bioeconomy by 2035.
• GOBARdhan sits alongside Electric Vehicles and Solar Energy as one of India’s parallel clean-energy transition pushes. Each targets a different part of the energy mix: biogas from waste, electric mobility, and solar generation.