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Biogas has been known since Ancient times. The Assyrians used it to heat their bath water. From 1895, the city of Exeter in England had street lighting fuelled by biogas produced from a methanisation unit installed at the town’s water purifying plant.
In modern times, China and India have used a lot of biogas: millions of domestic digestors have been installed to treat bovine excrement. According to a report of the World Bank (the Martinot report), there are almost 10 million households in developing countries using biogas for lighting.
Several European countries have built centralised methanisation installations (Denmark, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Germany).
New Zealand is the most advanced country as far as the use of biogas as fuel for buses in towns is concerned. In France, the towns of Chambery, Lille and Tours have buses that run on biogas. It is a cleaner product than diesel, since its composition is similar to natural gas: for equivalent quantities of energy, it discharges less fumes and carbon dioxide.
The Netherlands is the leading country for the injection of biogas into the gas distribution network.
Nevertheless the biogas contribution to world energy consumption remains overall very low. It is also the case in the 25-member EU, where only 5.3 million tep (tons oil equivalent) were produced in 2006.
The main European producers of biogas are the following:
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