It is an understatement to say that Nakul Kumar Sardana is proud of his new plant at Barsana, in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state.
Firstly, says the vice-president of a biomass joint venture between India’s Adani Group and France’s TotalEnergies, because it occupies “one of the holiest sites in the world”.
A four-hour drive south of the smog-filled capital New Delhi, among fields bristling with brickyard smokestacks, the small town of Barsana welcomes pilgrims who come to honour the Hindu goddess Radha.
But Sardana is also proud because his methanisation plant that opened in March is the “most technologically advanced and the largest biogas facility” in India.
It was built in Barsana to be as close as possible to its raw fuel — cattle dung and harvest stubble.
“This region is home to a million cows,” he said. “Their dung has been used as fuel for centuries in cooking”.
Cows have been blamed for contributing to global warming because they produce methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — in their manure or when they belch.
But in this case, the region is finding a creative use for the waste produced by the cattle, which are used for their milk. Eating them is taboo for many Hindus.
Stalks left behind after the rice harvest — that would otherwise be burned — join the slurry.
“Farmers are traditionally burning them, creating smog and pollution”, he added.
“In using natural waste, we are not only producing compressed biogas, but also high-quality organic fertiliser.”
Long lines of tractors dump dung and straw in the factory’s tanks, from which 10 tonnes of gas and 92 tonnes of fertiliser are produced each day.
In its endless quest for power to fuel its economic growth, the world’s most populous nation — and third-largest fossil fuel polluter — has pushed biogas to achieve a much-promised transition to carbon neutrality by 2070.
In 2018, the government set itself an ambitious goal of building 5,000 biogas plants in six years.
But despite generous subsidies and the introduction of a buyback guarantee, the project attracted little initial interest — until the government forced the hand of producers.
From April 2025, at least one percent of liquid gas fuelling both vehicles and for domestic use must be biogas — rising to five percent by 2028.
That prompted a response from key players, starting with billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani — both close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi — eying lucrative public contracts.
Ambani promised his Reliance group would build 55 biogas plants by the end of 2025 to convert “food producers to energy producers” and generate 30,000 jobs.
His rival Adani plans to invest around $200 million in the sector in the next three to five years.
