Biogas: Affordable and Renewable Energy for Low-Resource Communities

Low-resource communities often have little choice but to use firewood to cook food, which harms their health and the environment. Biogas offers an affordable and renewable alternative.

The Energy Conundrum

Remote and low-resource communities worldwide face an energy conundrum. To cook food, they need an energy source. Liquid petroleum gas (LPG), a fossil fuel and byproduct of extracting and refining crude oil, is relatively expensive for low-income households, often costing more than 20% of their monthly income. So instead, most use firewood, especially in rural settings where it is widely available.

However, using firewood contributes to deforestation and forest degradation, with global estimates indicating that about 30% of woodfuel harvesting is unsustainable. Additionally, household air pollution caused by burning firewood is a significant cause of disease and death. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than three million people die prematurely each year because of it. Children are especially vulnerable, with exposure to household air pollution causing more than half of pneumonia deaths in children under five.

A Renewable Solution

Low-resource communities have access to one valuable and often underused resource: organic waste. As kitchen and toilet waste decompose, they produce biogas. Biogas is a mixture of methane, a flammable gas composed of carbon and hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and other gases. When released into the atmosphere, methane has 80 times the global warming power of carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after reaching the atmosphere. However, when burned, methane produces carbon dioxide and water, with a lower medium-term impact on the environment.

With support from organizations like Community Partners International (CPI), low-resource communities worldwide are turning to biogas as an affordable, cleaner, and renewable energy source.

Biogas in Action

CPI works in partnership with remote and low-resource communities in Bangladesh to build small-scale, community-based biogas plants.

The plants collect waste from kitchens and communal toilets into separate chambers, which feed into a digester tank. The waste breaks down in the digester, producing biogas, which rises into a gas holding tank. From there, it is piped to communal kitchens where families cook food. The digested waste is then discharged into an outflow chamber.

For Hajera, a widow living in the village of Kalikapur in Patuakhali District, the biogas plant provides her with an affordable energy source for her steamed rice cake business:

Closing the Loop

The biogas plants supported by CPI offer closed-loop recycling. Once the waste is fully digested in the plant, it can be used as fertilizer for community kitchen gardens. The food produced then contributes kitchen and toilet waste for the digester, and the cycle repeats.

Biogas plants offer a stepping-stone to greener and healthier energy solutions for low-resource communities. They can help reduce poverty, support improved health and livelihoods, and promote energy and climate justice.