The Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT) is a government scheme launched on October 1, 2018, by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG). It was created to establish an ecosystem for the production and utilization of Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) as a clean, alternative transport fuel. The initiative was designed to solve multiple national challenges, including reducing India's heavy dependence on imported crude oil, managing over 62 million metric tonnes of annual organic waste, and mitigating air pollution from agricultural stubble burning.
The scheme works by having Public Sector Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs)—such as Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum (BPCL), and Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL)—invite Expression of Interest (EoI) from entrepreneurs to set up CBG production plants. These plants convert organic waste like cattle dung, agricultural residue, and municipal solid waste into raw biogas, which is then purified to over 90% pure methane and compressed into CBG, a fuel chemically similar to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). The OMCs procure the CBG and distribute it through their existing fuel infrastructure. To support this, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) categorized CBG projects under Priority Sector Lending.
A significant recent change is that the SATAT initiative is being subsumed into the relaunched GOBARdhan scheme (Galvanising Organic Bio-Agro Resources Dhan), effective September 1, 2026. The new framework, administered by the MoPNG with a ₹23,731 crore outlay, provides a more comprehensive support system, including a 10-year administered price for CBG. Crucially, the government has introduced a mandatory CBG blending obligation (CBO) for CNG and PNG, starting at 1% in FY 2025-26 and scaling up to 5% by FY 2028-29, which legally mandates OMCs to procure CBG. Liabilities committed under the original SATAT scheme will continue to be honored.