Biogas

Lunch at a Yunnan restaurant with our neighbours & landlords. Mr Jia's main piece of news is that he's now the China rep for a German biogas company, having switched from solar energy. Germany has nearly 6,000 biogas plants, producing energy from crop waste and manure. Mr Jia is introducing the know-how and equipment to China. 
Bio-gas has been used in China for many years but it's really taken off in the last decade. In the poor province of Guangxi, for example,  2.73 million biogas tanks have been built in villages, benefiting about a third of rural households. It is estimated that this has saved 7.65 million tons of coal and 13.40 million tons of firewood annually.

It wasn't used to cook our lunch.