Environmental research

Targeted Location and Population: The targeted location is Datong Municipality, Shanxi Provence. It is located in the cross of Loess Plateau and Mongolian Plateau. It is one of the most important heavy-industry bases due to the enrichment of coal resources. The target groups are about 1500 households who use biogas digester. The annual average net income of the targeted population is around RMB 1300-1600, much lower than the national average level of RMB 4761 in 2008. Problems: Farmers are lack of the knowledge of utilization and maintenance of biogas digesters. The physical leakage of biogas is a severe problem in some cases. The performance of biogas digester in winter is inefficient. According to investigation and calculation, the energy efficiency of the biogas digester is only 11.91% in project area. Farmers do not have motivation to use biogas since the coal is very cheap in Datong. So that the faulted biogas digesters will be disused if cheap and proper servicing cannot be provided. Nowadays, the biogas service system established by governments can only cover the county level and part of towns. Very few people in rural area have a well understanding of low carbon development and mitigation of climate change. Solutions/ planned activities: 1. Improve the local farmers` management capacity of rural household biogas digesters through organizing training workshop and disseminating knowledge. 2. Raise rural residents awareness on the climate change through`train-the-trainers`, workshop and other outreach activities. 3. Establish the database of biogas application and its capacity of mitigating climate change. Anticipated results/ immediate outputs of this project: 1.about 50 eligible volunteer trainers have abundant biogas knowledge and they can train the farmers. 2. about 750 biogas households have the skill and knowledge of biogas digester maintainance. 3.Compile a report The common problems in the biogas application and proposals . 4. about 50 eligible voluntary trainers have abundant knowledge on climate change and rural ecology conservation. 5. The rural residents knows about climate change issues. 6. Compile the draft of the Guidance for Low Carbon Life in Rural Area .It will support the policy making in terms of climate change in rural area in future.

China