Unlocking India’s bioenergy potential

India is developing its bioenergy resource to provide affordable energy while reducing fossil fuel imports, improving air quality and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Modern bioenergy today accounts for 13% of India’s total final energy consumption and is expected to grow by up to 45% between 2023 and 2030. However, to meet India's longer-term bioenergy ambitions, it will need to deploy new technologies and practices to collect and convert its vast feedstock potential into sustainable biofuels, biogases and solid bioenergy. Moreover, additional policy details are needed to deliver on some of India's policy ambitions. For instance, India has announced its mandatory blending obligations for compressed biogas (CBG), but it has yet to release design elements such as a certificate trading market.

This commentary discusses the implications of India's bioenergy ambition for feedstock availability, innovation needs and prioritisation. Authors also share lessons learned from biogas certification markets that India may consider when designing its Mandatory Blending Obligations for CBG programme.