Around 27 million Chinese rural households, 10 percent of the total, will be able to use clean marsh gas energy by 2010, according to China's Ministry of Agriculture.

The program, partly funded by local governments, will make marsh gas available to more rural households as the country strives to curb severe pollution and to use energy more efficiently.

Large numbers of rural Chinese, especially those in remote villages, suffer from severe cooking smoke pollution caused by using dry straw, reeds or coal as cooking fuel.

"It will also help improve energy efficiency, because a lot of China's one billion tons of straw and reeds is wasted or used in an inefficient manner," said Yan Li, a research fellow at the ministry's marsh gas research center.

Yan said that straw and reeds can be turned into clean, highly efficient marsh gas for farmers' cooking.

Chinese central and local governments are offering subsidies of US$50 to 150 to each farmer who builds a US$375 marsh gas facility.

In 2005, up to 50 million farmers from 18 million households used seven billion cubic meters of marsh gas, a substitute for 5.24 million tons of coal.

(Xinhua News Agency September 16, 2006)