RSS Feed (xml)
kilometres (three miles) every day to collect firewood so she could
cook meals for her family. Then two years ago, she bought a biogas
plant under a government scheme to encourage villagers to convert to
greener energy -- an event the 30- year-old mother of three says
transformed her life. "Biogas is a blessing for my family. These days
I don't have to go into the jungle to collect wood, " she told AFP
outside her simple mud-brick home in the southern village of
Badrahani. "It is clean and safe, and we are healthier now as we are
not breathing in smoke all the time." In all, 82 households in
Badrahani have bought biogas plants at heavily subsidised rates under
the scheme, which is funded by the Dutch and German governments.
Biogas is a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide produced by feeding
cow dung, human waste and water into an airtight underground tank
known as digester and allowing it to decompose. Environmentalists say
biogas has huge potential in Nepal, where nearly 80 percent of the
population of 27 million live in rural areas with no electricity,
leaving them dependent on firewood for cooking and heating. This
means they live in smoke-filled houses, causing respiratory problems,
particularly for young children, while the destruction of forests is
also a major cause for concern. Badrahani is situated on the edge of
the Chitwan National Park, home to endangered species including the
Royal Bengal tiger and one- horned rhino, whose habitat is threatened
by villagers chopping down trees for firewood. "Biogas has brought a
green energy revolution to the country," said Prakash Lamichhane,
head of research at the Biogas Sector Partnership ( BSP), the
government agency in charge of installing the plants. "We have the
capacity to build 1.9 million biogas plants, but we have achieved
just 11 percent of our target so far. We still have a long way to
go. " Over the past two decades, BSP has installed around 210 ,000
biogas plants at a cost of around 350 dollars each, with the
government covering a third of the price. BSP says each plant reduces
the country's already low carbon emissions by around 4.7 tonnes a
year. "We are helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 987 ,000
tonnes every year. It is helping us combat climate change," said
Lamichhane, chief of the research department. The biogas project has
won plaudits as a rare environmental success in a country with one of
the world's most polluted capital cities. But BSP research and
development officer Mahaboob Siddiki said it had not always proved
easy to convert villagers. "Because the gas is produced from cow dung
and human waste, villagers thought it was impure, and that it would
be shameful to cook food using it," said Siddiki, who has worked on
the project since it began 26 years ago. "Several times, we were
chased away from some of the villages, but we never gave up," he
said, calling the technology a "win-win situation" for villagers and
the environment. It is a view shared by Bibhimaya Tamang, a 45-
year-old farmer from Badrahani who uses slurry -- a by-product of
biogas -- to fertilize her crops, giving her higher yields and more
income from the vegetables the family grows. "Staying in a
smoke-filled kitchen for hours was painful. It hurt my eyes and I
used to cough a lot while cooking," she told AFP. "Using biogas has
been so much better." Sameer Thapa, coordinator of Nepal's
Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC), said the country made 600
,000 dollars in 2007 by trading a million tonnes of carbon emission
reductions from biogas plants. "We have huge potential to benefit from
carbon trading as we lessen the use of firewood, which releases
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere," said Thapa. "Around 80 ,000
biogas plants are in the process of getting approval for carbon
trading by next year." Thapa said the proceeds would be used to
install more plants, enabling the government to increase its carbon
trading capacity further. "Many developing countries in Asia and
Africa have used our expertise to promote biogas, and many others
are asking for our help," said the BSP's Lamichhane. "Nepal has
always been known as the land of mountains. Now, developing countries
are calling us the land of biogas."
