Biogas system in rural China: Upgrading from decentralized to centralized?

As one of the important biomass energy sources, biogas construction plays a vital role in rural development. The last three decades have witnessed a strong promotion of household-based decentralized biogas system in China. Nevertheless, the government explicitly has a strong preference for large-scaled centralized biogas system, as the focuses of recent related polices have been shifted to it from decentralized system. Under this circumstance, this paper reviewed the development status of both decentralized and centralized biogas systems, described the limitations of decentralized biogas system in recent rural development and overviewed the changes in related policies supporting rural biogas construction. Based on these analyses, the perceptional, institutional, financial, technical and regional constraints are found out to be the five main constraints that hinder the upgrade of the biogas system. This paper suggests that balancing the development between the two biogas systems promoting the industrialization, commercialization and comprehensive utilization of biogas, and increasing household education should be attached more importance in future rural biogas policies.