Rural Clean Cooking, India

This portfolio of Gold Standard projects install biodigesters to convert waste from cattle into biogas, which is a closed loop clean energy solution for cooking and heating. Carbon finance lowers the cost of purchase and installation for the biodigester tank and cookstove for users. The biogas burns cleanly, reducing indoor air pollution and replacing emissions from fuel wood. The project also creates a circular economy for biogas which avoids waste, improves sanitation and creates jobs for installing biodigesters.​

The projects targets low-income and smallholder farmers in rural areas across India with a solution that produces clean and affordable energy with animal waste that otherwise go unused, emitting methane and threatening nearby water sources. The solution is a small fixed-dome biogas tank, also known as anaerobic digesters, that provides a clean, affordable, and convenient form of energy to rural families with cattle that create odour and waste problems. 

The project reduces emissions by preventing the release of methane from animal waste and by replacing the use of unsustainable fuels like firewood, charcoal and kerosene, and unsustainable chemical fertilisers. In addition, jobs are created for local populations, household sanitation is improved and air pollution is reduced to enhance the health of families.

The project activity involves the installation of thousands of household biogas plants located in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh across India. 

The purpose of the project is to replace the commonly used inefficient wood fired mud stoves technology, with clean, sustainable and efficient biogas. Each household utilizes cattle dung to feed the digester for the production of biogas for cooking purpose and heating water. This leads to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by displacing conventionally used non renewable biomass with renewable biogas. In addition, the hygienic conditions in the rural areas will be improved by an appropriate disposal of waste. Further, residue from the bio digesters can be used as organic fertilizer and will improve soil fertility in rural areas. Project activity will contribute towards sustainable development by replacing firewood with biogas generated from the biodigesters.

The project reduces methane emissions to help take urgent action to combat climate change (SDG 13). In addition, the project delivers a number of other sustainable development benefits. These include:

• Affordable and Clean Energy: Households no longer need to purchase fuel or collect wood for their energy needs, and the by-product after anaerobic biodigestion can be used as an organic fertiliser alternative. 
• Good Health and Well-being: Indoor air pollution is reduced by using biogas as an alternative to other conventional wood biomass forms of energy. The biogas systems also reduce unpleasant odours by containing the waste in closed chambers, attracting fewer flies and helping decrease incidence of associated diseases.
• Decent Work and Economic Growth: The project is helping create an industry for turning agricultural waste into free, renewable energy. Long-term employment opportunities are created with various masons and entrepreneurs involved in the biodigester production, installation, and maintenance.
• Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: Building these backyard biodigesters for farmers is a small-scale, yet high-impact form of innovative infrastructure to meet the basic needs subsistence farmers in a changing climate while reducing especially harmful methane emissions.
• Life on Land: The biogas systems reduce the degradation of surface waters by preventing runoff of untreated manure. As households would previously source fuelwood from nearby forests, the project helps reduce pressure on these habitats by eliminating dependence on wood for fuel.