Sustainable Alternative Towards Affordable Transportation (SATAT) Scheme
The SATAT Scheme is a major initiative launched in October 2018 by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, in association with Public Sector Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) like Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL), Bharat Petroleum (BPCL), and Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL).
The primary aim of SATAT is to establish a network of production plants for Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) and make it widely available in the market as a green automotive fuel. This scheme acts as a bridge between waste management and India’s growing energy needs.
What is Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG)?
To understand the SATAT scheme, one must first understand the fuel it promotes.
- Production: As learned in the previous chapter, biogas is produced naturally through the anaerobic decomposition of biomass (like cattle dung, agricultural residue, municipal solid waste, and sugarcane press mud).
- Purification and Compression: Raw biogas contains impurities. When raw biogas is highly purified to remove carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, and then tightly compressed into cylinders, it is called Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG).
Energy Value: CBG contains over 90% to 95% pure methane. Because of this high purity, CBG is exactly similar to commercially available Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in its energy potential. It can be used directly in any vehicle or industry that currently runs on CNG.
The Four Main Objectives of SATAT
The government designed the SATAT scheme to tackle multiple national challenges simultaneously. Its four core objectives are:
- Waste Utilization: To responsibly utilize more than 62 million metric tonnes of waste generated every year in India.
- Emission Reduction: To drastically reduce vehicular exhaust emissions and tackle severe air pollution caused by the open burning of agricultural residue (stubble burning).
- Import Reduction: To cut down India’s heavy dependence on imported crude oil and natural gas.
- Job Creation: To boost rural entrepreneurship and supplement employment generation across the country.
Implementation and Application Process
The SATAT scheme does not build the plants itself; instead, it empowers private citizens and businesses to do so through a structured process:
- Expression of Interest (EOI): Entrepreneurs are invited to submit an EOI to set up a CBG plant.
- Letter of Intent (LOI): If the proposal meets the parameters, the oil and gas company (like IOCL) issues a Letter of Intent (LOI) to the entrepreneur. (Note: The 100th LOI was recently handed over by the Minister of Petroleum).
- Production and Sale: The entrepreneur builds the plant and produces CBG. The Oil Marketing Companies guarantee they will buy this gas and sell it through their existing retail outlets (fuel stations) to car and truck owners.
Targets and Financial Support
- Massive Targets: The SATAT initiative envisages setting up 5,000 CBG plants across the country. These plants are expected to produce 15 Million Metric Tonnes (MMT) of CBG every year, which equals about 40% of India’s current CNG consumption.
- Priority Sector Lending: To help entrepreneurs get easy bank loans to build these expensive plants, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has categorized CBG projects under Priority Sector Lending.
- Integration with Other Schemes: SATAT is heavily supported by the National Policy on Biofuels (2018) and the GOBARdhan Scheme. Furthermore, the leftover waste from CBG plants is sold as Fermented Organic Manure, providing an additional revenue source for the plant owner and supporting organic farming in India.
Strategic Benefits of the SATAT Scheme
Key Benefits and Significance
India is home to the highest cattle population in the world (close to 300 million), producing a massive daily output of 3 million tonnes of dung. The GOBARdhan scheme utilizes this massive resource to provide several benefits:
- Sanitation and Health: By safely processing animal waste, it becomes much easier to keep the village sanitized. This reduces the spread of diseases and improves overall livestock health.
- Clean Energy: The generated biogas provides rural households with access to a cleaner, cheaper, and smoke-free fuel for cooking and lighting, increasing village self-reliance in energy.
- Agricultural Boost: The leftover material from the biogas plant is a nutrient-rich bio-slurry. This acts as an excellent, natural organic fertilizer, reducing the farmer’s dependence on expensive chemical fertilizers and increasing farm yields.
- Economic Growth: It provides a stable supply of compressed gas to oil companies and opens up accessible credit through banks for new rural entrepreneurs, boosting the local village economy.
