The surge of anxiety over LPG scarcity as a consequence of the US-Israel war on Iran is a good moment to review what India has done with two neglected alternatives—biogas and solar thermal energy.

Biogas in chemically clean form, produced from various wastes and then compressed, is a policy priority to cut fossil fuel demand. It would be distributed, the Union government said, through pipelines and containers, just like other fuels.

Producing biogas was not going to be difficult, given the plentiful availability of biomass from a variety of sources, starting with cattle and farming. There was high-quality solar potential across much of the country, offering another alternative.

Missed opportunities in scaling solutions

By this token, India should have developed biogas units and solar cookers at scale, tested them for efficiency and promoted them with the same enthusiasm as grid-connected solar photovoltaics. The Union government listed 15 sources of biomass to produce biogas, including food and municipal solid waste, coffee, rice straw, sewage, chicken, and dairy. But the system clearly did not go mainstream.

India is the co-founder, along with France, of the International Solar Alliance headquartered in Haryana. Ten years after it was launched at the Paris climate conference of 2015, it should have witnessed high-quality work on replicable solar cooker models that would drive costs down and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. But the ISA website has nothing on this. Neither does the renewables market offer much for those intending to shift to solar alternatives.

Impact of LPG disruption on daily life

In the absence of scaled technologies and........

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