Hanoi, Vietnam

Le Thi Vinh used to put up with a smoky kitchen, filled with soot particles formed in her muddy stove. That changed in late 2016, when she stopped using firewood but turned to biogas, generated from the waste of the 46 pigs she raises. The biogas generated is enough to support a family of four for three meals a day. But it’s not cheap—the biodigesters needed to make the gas cost about $600 to build, five times Le’s monthly income of VND 3 million ($130).

Le, a 53-year-old farmer, is among the 7 million living in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital and its second most populous city. The city is filled with diesel-powered motorcycles, some 5 million, choking the air and causing traffic jams.

But Hanoi is changing. In addition to an ambitious plan to ban motorbikes by 2030, Hanoi is one of 63 provinces and cities in the country that is adopting biogas for cooking. Le used her own savings and borrowed money from relatives to build the biodigesters, which are part of a program funded by the Dutch government that uses Chinese technology. The goal of using biogas is to both breathe cleaner air and fight against climate change, one of the biggest challenges of the century.

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