EAI perspectives

Biogas is a sector that had promised a lot but failed to deliver.

The potential and promise of biogas has been in the simplicity of the technology - to a large extent, you are allowing nature to do its job and convert organic waste into products of value (biogas and fertilizer).

The reason it has failed to deliver has been in its inability to scale. Even today, ,worldwide, there are hundreds of millions of tons (perhaps even a few billion tons) of organic waste - food waste, municipal solid waste, agro waste - lying around without being converted to anything of value, or worse, simply burnt at sites. In theory, all these can be converted into biogas, but two challenges - logistics and conversion of cellulosic biomass to biogas - have prevented such conversion.

Startups such as Sistema.bio offer rays of hope. Founded in 2010 in Mexico, this biogas solution provider, with a focus on the farmer sector, has been able to show much better scalability than most of its competitors anywhere in the world. At present, it has over 200,000 users in 30 countries, and has expanded its scope of offerings beyond technology and service to financing its solutions. It has done a pretty good job with its modular solution such that it can serve both small and large farms, and also makes it easy for the farmer to remove and shift the biodigester to other locations when there is a need. 

Team EAI wishes Sistema.bio the very best!