The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) gave India almost universal access to LPG, but the current energy supply crisis risks pushing households back to kerosene and biomass.
The Rs 993 hike in commercial prices of 19 kg LPG cylinders this month shows how quickly global volatility can catch up with LPG users. It is worth remembering that while60%of LPG of India, which operates33 croreskitchen, imported directly. The remaining 40% is produced locally, but depends on crude oil,89% of which India imports. Thus, about 95% of our primary cooking fuel is exposed to global markets. The government stabilizes prices by absorbing these shocks. In FY2026, domestic LPG sales of29 million tonsresulted in60,000 croresin sub-recoveries. The question now is how to build resilience in a kitchen economy exposed to distant geopolitical shocks. This is where biogas deserves more attention.
As the world’s largest milk producer, India has cattle manure nutrients in abundance across the dense milk corridors of Gujarat, Punjab, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. One last oneSTUDYby the Energy, Environment and Water Council estimates that India is home to about 40 million livestock households with three or more animals. At standard conversion parameters, a family of three cattle can generate enough biogas to displace approximately 100kg of LPG per year – about seven cylinders – after accounting for seasonal variations. This is enough to meet the annual cooking energy needs of a typical rural family. Operating a prefabricated home-scale biogas plant requires a daily feed of cattle manure mixed with water, which can be prepared in less than an hour. If all these households were to switch to biogas, the displacement potential is up to ~4 million tonnes of LPG annually. Even if a quarter of these households make the transition, it could save up to Rs 2,000 crore a year, and that’s a significant dent in the import bill.
Despite such potential, less than1%of rural households use it as the main cooking fuel. Biogas was first identified as an alternative fuel during the oil crisis of the 1970s. A major reason for low adoption was legacy concerns about the poor quality of construction and maintenance of traditional brick and mortar systems. LPG was also prioritized over other clean cooking technologies, as cylinders are more easily distributed and have a relatively lower initial cost. Modern innovations in prefabricated systems now address many of these issues, providing easier installation and reliable performance. The last onefield assessmentsalso report high levels of user satisfaction with these technologies. The main barrier today is the initial capital cost. Bridging this gap requires reimagining how subsidies are designed and how public funds are distributed.
First, the LPG subsidy for eligible households should be redirected to partially cover the capital cost of biogas systems. For a typical PMUY household in FY2026, the state provided Rs 300 per cylinder as direct subsidy and absorbed another Rs 295 as sub-recovery, which works out to ~Rs 600 per fill-up. This spending stabilizes prices and prevents a return to polluting fuels such as firewood, but continues to guarantee an imported fuel with supply risks. The import bill also goes up every time a PMUY household moves to LPG cooking. The same Rs 600 per cylinder for seven cylinders per year comes to Rs 21,000 per household over five years, enough to cover 50% of the cost of a small, prefabricated biogas unit that will run for up to 20 years.
Second, build a standardized financing architecture for financing the sustainability gap, informed by models that have worked on the ground. For example, in oneSOFTWAREimplemented in milk-intensive regions, households pay 10% initially, program support covers 50% and the remaining 40% is recovered over time through rebates from monthly milk payments, or, in some cases, through slurry sold back to the cooperative. These models show that adoption is viable when financing is structured appropriately.
Finally, India needs to look beyond LPG and electric cooking, given its energy landscape. Biogas has the potential to be a mainstream clean cooking alternative rather than a niche solution. It also brings co-benefits around methane mitigation and soil enrichment. It is a mature and proven technology held back by funding and deployment design. What has changed is the cost of inaction.
In an uncertain energy landscape, biogas can emerge as a permanent Made-in-India asset, a trulyatmanirbharcooking fuel pipeline to millions of families in India’s dairy groups.
(Abhishek Kar is a Fellow at the Energy, Environment and Water Council. Bigsna Gill is Program Director, Alpha Innovation Social Foundation)
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.
