Developers of compressed biogas plants in Gujarat have one fewer office to visit. A general notification issued by the Gujarat Pollution Control Board on October 28 confirms that eligible CBG and bio-CNG plants fall in the White Category and therefore need neither a Consent to Establish nor a Consent to Operate from the board, DeshGujarat and IANS, via Punjab Kesari, reported. The point of the notification is that no plant should have to ask the GPCB for an individual exemption letter to prove it.
Why the GOBARdhan portal kept asking for an NOC
The exemption itself is not new. The Union environment ministry’s notification of November 12, 2024 (G.S.R. 703(E)) lets White Category units skip consent as long as they inform the state board and file a self-declaration of compliance. The GPCB followed with a circular on October 23 publishing a revised list of 768 White Category activities aligned with the Central Pollution Control Board’s classification, and eligible CBG plants appear on it at serial numbers 763 and 768, both outlets reported. The updated list is on the GPCB website.
The gap was between the rule and the counters that enforce other rules. Plant promoters registering on the Centre’s GOBARdhan Unified Registration Portal, or applying for state financial assistance or other permissions, were being asked to produce a CTE, CTO or a no-objection certificate from the GPCB, documents the board no longer issues to them. Each promoter then had to write to the board for a letter saying so. The October 28 notification tells departments, registration authorities and other agencies to stop demanding those papers for covered plants and to process applications on the strength of the intimation the plant has filed with the GPCB.
Which plants qualify, and what they still owe
The exemption is conditional. Only plants using the feedstock specified in the White Category entries, and meeting the attached conditions, are covered; the news reports did not list the feedstock, so a promoter has to read the entries at serial 763 and 768 rather than assume cattle dung or crop residue qualifies by default. Plants outside those entries, including CBG units run on industrial or process waste, remain under the normal consent regime. And a covered plant still has to notify the board before it starts, file the self-declaration, and comply with the Water and Air Acts; the notification changes paperwork, not emission limits.
The decision was taken under Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel with Forest and Environment Minister Arjun Modhwadia and Minister of State Pravin Mali, DeshGujarat reported. No official was quoted on how many pending applications had been held up by the missing letters.
Six Banas plants and a Rs 23,731 crore national push
The timing is not accidental. A day after the notification was reported, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due in Banaskantha on Friday to lay the foundation stones of two more Banas Dairy bio-CNG plants, at Tharad and Radhanpur, which together will process 175 tonnes of dung a day and take the cooperative to six plants handling 515 tonnes, IANS reported via SocialNews. Gujarat, Suzuki and the Japanese aid agency JICA want that model copied at other district dairies, as we reported in September, and the state separately plans 20,000 more household biogas units this year.
Behind both sits the Union Cabinet’s August 6 approval of GOBARdhan as a national compressed biogas scheme with an outlay of Rs 23,731 crore over ten years from 2026-27, per the Prime Minister’s Office. Capital support under that scheme flows through the same GOBARdhan portal whose NOC demand the GPCB has now addressed. For a dairy cooperative or a private developer in Gujarat, the sequence is: check the two White Category entries, file the intimation and self-declaration with the GPCB, and then register on the portal without a board letter. Whether district offices and banks apply it is the slower part.
Sources: DeshGujarat, IANS via Punjab Kesari, Gujarat Pollution Control Board, IANS via SocialNews, PMO
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.