Biogas program fuels sustainable agriculture in Tibet.

They were told it would never work in the high altitude and cold climate of Tibet. But a Beijing-based non-profit, the Global Environmental Institute (GEI), has successfully implemented a biogas program in the mountainous Chinese province. The project provides clean, renewable energy to households and complements the region's growing organic agriculture trade. Located in Wujinmai Village, it is the most recent outgrowth of GEI's sustainable rural development program, mirroring a three-year-old initiative in Yunnan province that boosted participating farmers' incomes 20-fold.

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GEI's program, launched in April 2006, uses a three-pronged approach to address issues of pollution and poverty, according to assistant executive director Lila Buckley. The first component is composting animal manure, a potential groundwater pollutant, into biogas for energy and fertilizer for growing organic crops. GEI trains farmers to manage and maintain the "upfloating" biogas systems, small tanks that employ simple technology and require only one cow or three pigs to provide one or two five-person households with heating and cooking fuel year-round. The clean, renewable, and free source of energy eliminates the need for Tibetans to spend hours each day collecting firewood.

Sunny but cold, Tibet provides ideal conditions for the second element of the program: greenhouses for organic agriculture production that double as homes for the biogas tanks, which would otherwise freeze. The third component involves capacity building and skills training to help the farmers learn to better manage their new businesses selling surplus organic vegetables. Although the project is only a year old, Buckley says it is working "amazingly well." In November, according to a GEI news release, Tibet's Development and Reform Commission evaluated the villagers' understanding and use of the biogas system and announced plans to replicate the project in nearby Shangsan Village in the coming year.