Around 27 million Chinese rural households, 10 percent of the
total, will be able to use clean marsh gas energy by 2010,
according to China's Ministry of Agriculture.
The program, partly funded by local governments, will make marsh
gas available to more rural households as the country strives to
curb severe pollution and to use energy more efficiently.
Large numbers of rural Chinese, especially those in remote
villages, suffer from severe cooking smoke pollution caused by
using dry straw, reeds or coal as cooking fuel.
"It will also help improve energy efficiency, because a lot of
China's one billion tons of straw and reeds is wasted or used in an
inefficient manner," said Yan Li, a research fellow at the
ministry's marsh gas research center.
Yan said that straw and reeds can be turned into clean, highly
efficient marsh gas for farmers' cooking.
Chinese central and local governments are offering subsidies of
50 to 150 U.S. dollars to each farmer who builds a 375-U.S.-dollar
marsh gas facility.
In 2005, up to 50 million farmers from 18 million households
used seven billion cubic meters of marsh gas, a substitute for 5.24
million tons of coal. ?
(Xinhua News Agency September 16, 2006)