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Bio Gas
09/03/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook's weekly installment on global
climate change. Bio-gas stoves are very popular in Nepal. These stoves burn gas
derived from anaerobically digested animal wastes. Now, environmentalists and
researchers are looking at the role bio-gas plants might play in reducing greenhouse
gas emissions. Manisha Ariel reports.
When her mornings chores are over 36 year old, Saraswati Bhetwel, gathers dung
from the floor of the shed, where she keeps her cows and buffalos, mixes it with the
cattle urine, that gets collected in a small pond nearby and pours the mixture into a
bio-gas plant.
Saraswati's bio-gas plant is six cubic meters in size and requires 80 pounds of
dung everyday. Bio-gas stoves replace traditional stoves that burn firewood, animal
dung, and agricultural waste and produce greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide,
nitrous oxide, and methane; which scientists believe are responsible for global
warming. Says Barbara Haya, a researcher with the UC Berkeley's energy and
resources group.
BH: If we just look at the emissions reductions from the collecting and burning of
the various fuels used in traditional cooking stoves, a single bio-gas plant, over the
course of one year, can prevent the release of 1 to even 5 tons of carbon dioxide
depending on what fuel is being displaced.
Haya believes bio-gas plants should be paid for by industrialized countries through
the clean development mechanism. The CDM is a procedure that allows industrialized
countries to partially meet their targets of greenhouse gas emissions by funding
cutback projects in developing countries. There are 80,000 bio-gas plants in Nepal
and there is potential for a million more.
The Weather Notebook is a production of The Mount Washington Observatory. Our
series on global climate change is funded by the New England Science Center
Collaborative and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation.
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