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Cooking on a biogas stove, Kim Thanh District, Vietnam

Problems are opportunities. So thought the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Dutch development agency SNV when they came to tackle the twin problems of costly cooking practices and huge amounts of untreated animal waste. Converting the waste to energy via biogas digesters produced clean, reliable energy for cooking and reduced the health and environmental problems associated with wood fuels, not to mention the animal waste. Over 78,000 systems have been installed benefiting more than 390,000 people with CO2 savings of around 167,000 tonnes per year.