Biogas could supply 18 per cent of total UK demand for gas

British homes could soon be heated by gas produced from cow manure and sewage slurry, under plans being considered by Centrica, the owner of British Gas.

The company, which has 16 million UK customers, is drawing up plans to build a plant that would use organic waste to produce biomethane that could be injected directly into the national gas network. National Grid has estimated that such biogas could supply 18 per cent of total UK demand for gas — or 18 billion cubic meters of the approximately 100 billion total consumed in Britain every year.

A spokesman for Centrica said that biogas was an “interesting technology” and that it was studying the option of constructing a plant in Britain that would process an array of materials, from abattoir and farm waste to municipal food waste.

John Baldwin, a biomethane consultant with CNG Services, which is advising Centrica, said that the industry remained “embryonic” in the UK but was well advanced in continental countries. However, he said that the economics of British biomethane production would be transformed in April 2011, when the Government begins a subsidy scheme called the Renewable Heat Incentive.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6876945.ece

If one assumes that by resolute technical fixes and modest social innovation we can double our end-use efficiency by shortly after 2000, then we could be twice as affiuent as now with today's level of energy use, or as affluent as now while using only half the end-use energy we use today. Or we might be somewhere in between—significantly more aflluent (and equitable) than today but with less enduse energy.

Nitrogen is a key element controlling the species composition, diversity, dynamics, and functioning of many terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. Many of the original plant species living in these ecosystems are adapted to, and function optimally in, soils and solutions with low levels of available nitrogen. The growth and dynamics of herbivore populations, and ultimately those of their predators, also are affected by N. Agriculture, combustion of fossil fuels, and other human activities have altered the global cycle of N substantially, generally increasing both the availability and the mobility of N over large regions of Earth. The mobility of N means that while most deliberate applications of N occur locally, their influence spreads regionally and even globally. Moreover, many of the mobile forms of N themselves have environmental consequences. Although most nitrogen inputs serve human needs such as agricultural production, their environmental consequences are serious and long term.

http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/1051-0761(1997)007%5B0737:HAOTGN%5D2.0.CO%3B2

Nepal: Bio-gas Revolution
Biogas technology is starting a green revolution in Nepal. According to WWF firewood is the preferred energy source in the country as almost 87% of households depend on it. However, biogas is emerging as a viable alternative. A recent report by AFP divulges that Nepal is making money (almost 600,000 US$ in 2007) trading carbon emissions with the help of numerous biogas plants across the country.

For a nation struggling find cheap and sustainable source of energy, biogas certainly brings good news for Nepal.
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/10/15/nepal-bio-gas-revolution/