Kashmir has plenty of biomass, but very little business built around it.
That was clear again at a national chemical-engineering convention in Srinagar, where biomass and decarbonisation returned to the policy agenda.
The real question is simple: can Kashmir turn farm waste, orchard waste and other organic material into energy, jobs and local businesses?
The numbers show how little has been done.
By March 2026, Jammu and Kashmir had only 5 megawatts of biomass-based cogeneration capacity under Phase I of the National Bioenergy Programme. India had more than 9,821 MW of bagasse-based cogeneration capacity, along with 1,048.84 MW of non-bagasse biomass cogeneration and 324.24 MW of waste-to-energy capacity.
Kashmir remains a very small player despite having large amounts of organic waste.
The raw material is already there. Farms produce crop residues, orchards leave behind pruned branches, and forests supply biomass. Towns also generate organic waste.
Much of this material has no organised route into an energy business. It is collected, dumped or left unused instead of being processed into fuel.
The missing piece is a working supply system.
Farmers and orchardists need collection services, businesses require storage yards and affordable transport, and processing units need to turn the material into pellets, briquettes, biogas or other fuels.
Industries, hotels and public institutions then have to buy those products. A plant without a dependable supply of raw material or a dependable market for its fuel will struggle to survive.
The Union government’s bioenergy programme already identifies feedstock collection and year-round storage as major challenges. Kashmir faces both problems because biomass production changes with the seasons and is spread across many locations.
Policy should therefore begin with the basic economics of collection, storage and transport before setting ambitious targets for new plants.
J&K has an Integrated Renewable Energy Policy 2026 and a Bio-energy Policy 2022. Those policies now need measurable results.
A parliamentary reply recorded zero biomass pellet manufacturing units, waste-to-energy plants and biogas projects in J&K under the National Bioenergy Programme.
Five megawatts of biomass cogeneration is a remarkably small industrial base for a region with so much organic waste.
The government can begin with districts where biomass is available in useful quantities. It can map supplies by season, establish collection and storage centres and create dependable procurement arrangements.
Public institutions and industries can become initial buyers, giving private companies a reason to invest in processing.
Kashmir has long treated waste mainly as something to remove. Biomass creates a chance to turn part of it into fuel and enterprise.
The government should now build the businesses and supply systems that can make that idea work.
A green economy cannot grow on conference speeches alone.
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