SNV, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Ministry of Agriculture in China organised a three-day International Workshop on Domestic Biogas from 20-22 November in Chengdu, China.

Almost 120 participants from over twenty countries, mainly from Asia, representing government institutions, private sector, financial institutions, civil society organisations and development agencies joined the event.

The workshop aimed to interactively evaluate the performance of national domestic biogas programmes in Asia and to assess their outlook. Additionally, the event discussed in-depth the latest developments and opportunities of the following key issues in biogas programmes: carbon financing, credit facilities, product development, use of bio-slurry and enabling environments of biogas sectors.

Being the cradle of domestic biogas development, Chengdu proved to be a perfect location for this fourth annual biogas workshop initiated by SNV. After Kathmandu (Nepal, 2009), Phnom Penh (Cambodia, 2010) and Bandung (Indonesia, 2011), this year’s biogas event led the participants through the well-known Biogas Institute of Ministry of Agriculture (BIOMA), as well as a biogas village, a biogas service network and the largest producer of fibreglass domes and biogas plants worldwide.

The event included an update of the Working Group on Domestic Biogas convened by SNV, under the Energy for All Partnership (E4ALL) initiated by the ADB. The objective of this group is the construction of one million domestic biogas plants across fifteen Asian countries by 2016.