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Dave Harcourt gravatar image

I need to preface this with the fact that my expertise and experience lies in Food Processing Technology - so this is not an authoritative view on Biogas. I have, however, worked in communities in South Africa where I have come into contact with suppliers and consumers.

Since the 80s there has been increasing attention to biogas in South Africa but it is mainly focussed on farm scale systems as well as urban domestic and food industry waste. There is a regulatory process for gas producers, managed by The National Energy Regulator (NERSA) who have established policy and feed-in tariffs. There has recently been a new interest in biogas plants at village level with NERSA approving 38 "village" plants in the two years to October 2013, with more being planned.

My hearsay based understanding. is that there were attempts at introducing biogas at household/village level at the end of the millennium at least by the Water Research Commission and CSIR. These seemed to have failed for social and community acceptance reasons.

An MSc Thesis by Anya Boyd at the University of Cape Town, which although it focusses on technology transfer of low carbon technologies as a means of mitigating global emissions, has a lot of solid information on Biogas in South Africa and also identifies players in the sector.

There is a Biogas Association in South Africa whose members list can be browsed online - also on the site is a paper from a 2013conference gives a broad overview of biogas in SA.

This might be more red herrings than useful information because of my lack of in depth involvement, but I am sure there is a lot of information available in South Africa to which, I believe, this should provide some kind of a starting point.