Here is Lakshmi Devamma (28), walking along with today’s catch. The cow dung is used to produce methane gas outside her kitchen. A garden hose brings the gas into the kitchen, where a gas burner has replaced the old open fire. This has given her and her children a new life.
Sustainable emissions reductions in the Indian countryside
By using cow dung as a source of energy, Lakshmi Devamma is contributing to a modest reduction in emissions. However, if this is multiplied by all the other families in her village and the 340 other villages in the district that have installed the same equipment, it adds up to a considerable reduction in emissions. The project is approved as a so-called CDM project.
Lakshmi has one cow, and every day she gathers the dung it has produced. She has a little “sandbox” in her garden in which she mixes the dung with a bucket of water and stirs it until it becomes slurry. Then she pulls aside a flat stone in the bottom and the mixture flows down into a two-cubic-metre cement reservoir under her garden. Here, a chemical process takes place and pure methane gas seeps up in a garden hose that goes into her kitchen.
Lakshmi serves her DNV guests tea with milk with obvious pride. The kitchen has been newly washed and is very clean.
Previously, Lakshmi spent nearly all her time in the forest finding wood for making food. Wearing cheap plastic flip-flops, both her hands and feet were scratched by all the thorns, leading to subsequent infections. It has become more and more difficult to find wood as a result of the deforestation and the forests are full of cobras. But worst of all is the fact that there are also men there. There is a high risk of being raped, and if anyone finds out that a woman has been raped, she is chased away from the village in disgrace.
Suffocation a major cause of death
She burned the wood in the kitchen fireplace in order to make food. Even though the house has a chimney, a lot of smoke seeped into the room. Suffocation due to carbon monoxide poisoning is actually one of the commonest causes of death among women and young children in Indian villages. In addition, the smoke left a black coating on walls and ceilings. But times have now changed for Lakshmi. She has washed her kitchen and can light her gas burner and make food in no time.
“I can even heat up some milk when the baby cries at night,” she tells us, beaming with joy. “Before, we had to let the babies cry all night, because no babies want cold milk.” And if she lit the fire at night, the whole family MIGHT have died from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Better marks
But what does she do with all the time she now has on her hands?
“I can make food for the children before they go to school. Before, they used to leave without breakfast. They also take a little packed lunch with them. In the middle of the day, I go to the field where my husband is working and give him lunch. When the children come home, I help them with their schoolwork,” she says. Better marks have been documented throughout the school now that the mothers have more time to help the children with their school-work. In addition many women now also devote their free time to “sericulture” (rearing silk worms for producing raw silk), which gives them additional revenues as well.
The village of Bagepalli is two hours’ drive by car and another hour by jeep from Bangalore. A great fuss is made of us when we arrive – the whole village turns out and Lakshmi is very proud to have visitors. After we have been given tea, all the women of the village and a few men gather in the community centre, where they eagerly, and all at the same time, tell us how their lives have been completely changed.
A person has been employed to maintain all the small methane plants in each group of five villages. Sometimes a hose leaks or a container cracks, and in such case the repairman is quick to get there and fix the fault.
Positive calculations
In the 341 villages in this area 5,500 families have installed biogas units, just like Lakshmi. If the cow dung is left lying on the ground, methane gas, which is 21 times more harmful than CO2, is produced and emitted straight into the atmosphere. Now, the methane is burnt and the emissions reduction is considerable when multiplied by the number of families. And what comes out of the reservoir in the garden is much better fertiliser than if the dung had been spread out on the land. When it is also taken into account that the forest is maintained, the calculations are very positive.
It costs just over EUR 100 to install this equipment, but these poor families cannot afford that amount. A French organisation, Velcan Energy, finances the deposits. DNV has validated and verified the project as a so-called CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) project, which is part of the Kyoto Protocol. This allows developed countries to invest in emission reduction projects in developing countries and include the emission reduction in their own emission accounts.
The French organisation will sell the emission quotas in the market and after seven years the project will have been paid off. Then the organisation will invest the capital in other similar projects. But best of all: after seven years the income from the quota sales will be paid directly to the villages. And you can bet they have plans for what this money is to be spent on:
“We’re going to build a new school for our children,” says Lakshmi.
