Cooking with gas from cow dungIn many rural households in India, cooking is done over simple open fireplaces in the home. This requires a lot of wood and causes toxic smoke. Respiratory and eye infections are very common, especially among women and children.This project promotes small biogas plants for private households. They produce biogas from cow dung and certain organic household waste. This allows families to cook without any worries. There is no smoke any more, and the tedious chore of collecting wood is also dispensed with. Many women and children were busy collecting firewood one day a week; now they have more time to work and play. On top of that, because they are saving the forests and reducing carbon emissions by not burning any more wood, the project can finance itself through climate protection. The families have to get involved themselves when the system is installed. Eighteen thousand such plants have already been built, each with a capacity of 2 cubic meters.How do biogas projects help fight global warming?In biogas facilities, biomass ferments into biogas in sealed digesters. Biomass may consist of organic waste or dung from cows or other animals. In countries like India or Vietnam, families use the gas from small biogas plants for cooking. This reduces CO2 emissions that would be produced by cooking with wood or charcoal. Biogas plants also prevent methane from escaping into the atmosphere - as is the case when organic waste is stored in a mine. Instead, the resulting gas is fed directly from the closed container to the cooking units.