Challenges and potential to adopt biogas technology: A case study of Faisalabad, Pakistan

Abstract

In the past few years, pertaining to energy shortage, Government of Pakistan promoted the biogas plants in specific rural areas. This study is an attempt to explore the success and failure adopted biogas plants by the farmers in rural areas of Faisalabad, Pakistan. In this study, the researcher selected tehsil Faisalabad of district Faisalabad based on the availability of biogas plants installed by the Government, NGO/INGOs and private contractors in the past few years. Snowball sampling method was used to identify the sample size. Total 51 biogas adopters participated in the study as respondents. Primary data were collected through face to face interviews on a structured questionnaire. Results shows that 33.3% of respondents were fully satisfied with their biogas plants. Close to one fourth (23.5%) of respondents were partially satisfied while 43.1% of respondents were not satisfied with their biogas plants. More than half (56.9%) of biogas plants were in working condition and 43.1% of biogas users abandoned for many reasons. The major reasons for the inspiration behind construction and installation of biogas plants were subsidy, cases of existing biogas plant owners, social advantages/reputation, motivation from construction/installation agency and conservation of time and energy. Whereas, for the reasons such as frequently come across technical problems, unavailability of technicians, difficulty in operation of biogas plant, insufficient gas for food preparation /lighting, escape of gas through joints/connections and extra workload were the reasons compelling farmers to abandoning the biogas plants. It was found that operation and maintenance of biogas plants is one of the major issues due to untrained, partially trained owners, unavailability of technicians and skilled operators.