Suzuki Is Developing A Plan To Run Cars On Cow Poop

Imagine this: instead of having to deal with gasoline and all of the associated geopolitical machinations that complicate its supply, or having to deal with the expense and infrastructural issues of electric batteries, you could simply take the plentiful bounty of energy that is gifted to humanity via the anus of a cow and use that to power your car. That’s the dream, isn’t it? Instead of filling your tank with expensive, toxic gasoline, you could be running a hose from vast tanks brimming with a rich, redolent slurry made from the leavings of bovine bowels. What a world that would be!

Well, it seems that this dream is shared by at least a few major companies, like Suzuki, who in partnership with Banas Dairy and the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) of India. You probably generally don’t think about dairy companies as major players in the global energy market, an omission, which, if you’ll forgive me, disgusts me. However, I promised my clergyperson I would keep my anger in check and instead will inform you about this project, and keep my own judgements in check.

This arrangement started back in 2023 with the goal of setting up four cow dung-based biogas plants designed to produce Compressed Biomethane Gas (CBG) in Banaskantha district of Gujarat. There is at least one operational plant today, and it’s producing cow crap-based fuel for 600 to 700 vehicles every day. These vehicles are ones that are already designed to run on Compressed Natural Gas (GNG) of which India already has many, including many of India’s iconic autorickshaws.

The fuel sold from the biogas station costs the equivalent of 85 cents per kilogram, which is about 21 cents less than what gasoline costs in the same area. Not only is the cow dung-based fuel cheaper, but local farmers in the area can sell the cow manure they produce for about 1 rupee per kilogram; the plant buys 88 tons of cow pies from farmers all over the area, making this an extremely locally-sourced fuel that puts money directly back into the economy.

It’s really hard to find a downside to this; it’s environmentally sound, as capturing the methane in cow shit and turning it into fuel before it ends up in the atmosphere helps to mitigate methane’s damage as a greenhouse gas, and the use of the waste to make fuel simply piggybacks on the existing dairy industry, adding a new source of income and a valuable new product. Oh, and the residue from the process that turns cow shit into fuel? That can be re-used as fertilizer.

Perhaps more unique to India is the cow’s status as a sacred animal, which maybe lends a certain cachet to running your car off the leavings of something revered. I don’t know for certain that people think that way, but I can imagine it. Vividly.

Now, since cow crap is, you know, crap, it’s not exactly an energy-dense source of fuel. After all, it’s what’s left over from plants after energy has been extracted from it to, you know, run a whole cow. As a result, it takes the poop from 10 cows over the course of one day to power a car for a day.

So, sure, it takes a lot of cow crap to make viable vehicle fuel, but it’s not like anyone had anything better to do with all that bullshit, right? Why not turn it into fuel?

Of course, it’s hard not to forget that we’ve heard of grandiose plans like these before. There have been plans to turn panda crap, alligator guts, seaweed, turkey offal, and just whatever garbage into fuel going back decades, and while some of these plans have seen some success and use, so far they haven’t transformed the global energy landscape into one that runs on otherwise unwanted waste.

The process for turning the dung into fuel isn’t quick; the plant has to mix the dung with water and then let it ferment for 35 days to produce the biogas, but now that the plant is up and running, a steady supply of the biogas is available. You can actually sort of see it in this photo of the plant, filling those balloon-like tops of what I believe are storage tanks.

But I’m very happy to see that people aren’t giving up; the idea of making fuel from literal shit is just too compelling a concept to let go. There’s still a lot of work to do, mostly in the logistics and distribution departments, but India seems serious about making this work. The government recently announced a scheme called Sampoorn Gobardhan, which is Hindi for “cattle waste wealth” that is designed to promote growth in the biogas sector. The potential is there; experts with the Global Biofuels Alliance believe that if India can can utilize even one-third of its cattle waste, they could replace their natural gas import demand completely.

Energy independence, from cow shit!