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Maquis (World War II)

The Maquis were rural guerrilla bands of French and Belgian Resistance fighters, called maquisards, during the German military administration in occupied France during World War II. Initially, they were composed of young, mostly working-class, men who had escaped into the mountains and woods to avoid conscription into Vichy France's Service du travail obligatoire (STO; 'Compulsory Work Service') which provided forced labor for Germany. To avoid capture and deportation to Germany, they became increasingly organized into active resistance groups.

They had an estimated 25,000 to 40,000 members in autumn of 1943 and approximately 100,000 members in June 1944.

Meaning
The maquis made up one component of the mosaic of the French Resistance. The maquis refers to the organization of bands of resistance guerrillas which emerged in rural France, mainly in the south. The maquis were emergent in 1943 and were also active in 1944.

Originally the word came from the kind of terrain in which the armed resistance groups hid, high ground in southeastern France covered with scrub growth called maquis (scrubland).

Although strictly speaking it means 'thicket', maquis could be roughly translated as "the bush"; in Corsica, the saying prendre le maquis 'to go into the bush' is used to describe someone who leaves the village in order to live in the bush, either biding time to seek revenge, or while being pursued by others with an intent to arrest or kill. Historians have not established how this Corsican language term arrived on the mainland of France, but observe that:

The term maquis signified both the group of fighters and their rural location. Members of those bands were called maquisards. Their image was that of a committed and voluntary fighter, a combattant, as opposed to the previous réfractaire (lit. 'refractory'; 'unmanageable'). The term became an honorific meaning "armed resistance fighter". The Maquis came to symbolize the French Resistance and was used to describe resistance groups that fought in France before the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. Once the Allies had secured a foothold in France, the government of Free France attempted to unite the separate groups of Maquis under the banner of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).

The national denomination given to all Maquis forces during the war is Forces françaises de l'intérieur, known as the "FFI"; in English, the French Forces of the Interior. This large corp of about 400,000 active members (in 1944) is divided in three major sections, corresponding to three political or professional inclinations:
 * The Francs-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP), a para-military organism created and controlled by the Parti Communiste français, the French Communist Party.
 * The Armée secrète (the AS; lit. 'Secret Army'), mostly led by French army officers and with a right-wing tilt.
 * The Organisation de résistance de l'armée (the ORA; 'Resistance organisation of the army'), formally created in January 1943 as a more "official" and apolitical organism for the continuation of armed struggle by ex-French military personnel in the Zone libre (southern half of metropolitan France).

All three groups were deemed "terrorists" by the Vichy regime of the French State and by German authorities and other neighbouring fascist regimes. Other (rare) local groups did not affiliate with these organisations.

Operations
Most maquisards operated in the remote or mountainous areas of Brittany and southern France, especially in the Alps and in Limousin. They relied on guerrilla tactics to harass the Milice (the Vichy militia) and German occupation troops. The Maquis also aided the escape of downed Allied airmen, Jews and others pursued by the Vichy and German authorities. Maquisards usually relied on some degree of sympathy or cooperation from the local populace. Most of the Maquis cells—like the Maquis du Limousin or the Maquis du Vercors—took names after the area they were operating in. The size of these cells varied from tens to thousands of men and women.

In March 1944, with the Allies gaining ascendancy, Maquis groups intensified their operations. In reaction to their weakening power, the occupiers and Vichy collaborationists began a terror campaign throughout France, enacted by German military units and the Milice. This included reprisals by SS troops against civilians living in areas where the French resistance was active, such as the Oradour-sur-Glane, the Maillé and the Tulle massacres. The Maquisards exacted their revenge, both at the time with reactive atrocities, and later in the épuration sauvage (lit. 'savage purge': 'savage' or 'wild' intended to indicate it was undertaken before the rule of law was reestablished) that took place after the war's end.

In French Indochina, the local resistance fighting the Japanese since 1941 was backed up by a special forces airborne commando unit created by de Gaulle in 1943, and known as the Corps Léger d'Intervention (CLI). They were supplied by airlifts of the British Force 136.

Politics
Politically, the Maquis included right-wing nationalists, liberals, socialists, communists, and anarchists. Some Maquis bands that operated in southwest France were composed entirely of left-wing Spanish veterans of the Spanish Civil War. Spanish Civil War veteran Carlos Romero Giménez was a centrist republican operating from Bordeaux.

According to Matthew Cobb, the Communist Maquis groups adopted more active and immediate guerrilla tactics to combat the Nazis, while the groups affiliated with De Gaulle were asked to wait for a larger attack later in the war. Thus, some maquis joined Communist groups simply to be part of a more active resistance movement and not because of their politics. Georges Guingouin was one of the most active Communist Maquis leaders.

The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) helped the Maquis who were affiliated with the Free French with supplies and agents, help which was not extended to the Communist Maquis groups. The American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) also began to send its own agents to France in cooperation with the SOE and the French BCRA agents, as part of Operation Jedburgh.

The Maquis had many different sub groups with their own objectives and political affiliations. In 1944, an OSS agent, Robert R. Kehoe, was embedded within a group of Maquis and described the organization as "fractured", observing that "the various components were quite independent, with members loyal to their own leaders and to the political forces behind them". Different ideologies within the subgroups created tensions that had to be put aside at times during the war but prosecuted those of the far right after. People like Georges Loustaunau-Lacau and Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, leaders of the French Resistance group Alliance, were both questioned about their loyalty during and after the war. This came as no surprise as both were from far-right political backgrounds, that didn’t favor the dominant Gaullist narrative. Lacau suffered the most, all the way up to his death by being put in jail several times, and accused by communist colleagues of siding with the Germans, while Fourcade was able to suffer fewer accusations by switching to Gaullism.

Examples of the independence of separate Maquis groups can be found all throughout France during the Second World War. For example, Maquis groups in Brittany often did not speak French and were focused on the expulsion of German forces from their region and not from France as a whole. As they did not operate like a normal resistance organization due to their lack of centralization, the Maquis would not be able to accomplish as much as the Allied nations had hoped.

History
Prior to the inception of the Maquis, small resistance groups were created in the occupied and unoccupied zones of France. In northern and western France, movements like Organisation civile et militaire, Libération-Nord, Ceux de la Libération, Ceux de la Résistance survived through clandestine pamphlets or newspapers, to build up a solidarity of attitudes and disparate actions and to 'taunt the Germans' (narguer les Allemands). Some of these movements also began to hide weapons and plot sabotage. In the Zone Libre, movements were created as early as in the north and west but did not face decimating raids by the authorities, which allowed movements like Combat, Libération-Sud and Franc-Tireur to have a more expansive character.

Resistance groups in the occupied zone eventually became linked to the Free French in London or the Special Operations Executive (SOE) set up by Britain to undermine Nazi-occupied Europe with specially trained agents. By May 1941, the northern movements, who specialized in sabotage and espionage and the southern movements, who focused on planning escape routes, developed the only major movement common to both, the Front National. Resistance became closely linked with the effects of the occupation and Vichy legislation and as the working class became alienated "resisters and people on the run could be harboured with a degree of safety" in the rural areas of France, resistance had a role and justification in the lives of many people "who had no ambition to hold a gun, or memorize a coded message, though as the occupation grew in its violence the pressure on the French people to defend themselves by force intensified, and the military nature of resistance came to predominate".The connection between the Vichy government and armed resistance paved the way for the eventual formation of the Maquis.

The Service du travail obligatoire (STO; compulsory labor service) was enacted on 16 February 1943 but underwent various refinements and classifications. It required young men born between 1920 and 1922 to register at their mairies (town halls), whereupon the authorities "listed several categories of workers, divided them into those who were exempt, those who would be liable for compulsory service in Germany, and those who would have to work for German industries in France". In the first few months, reports suggest that there were many who refused STO and went into hiding, mostly in areas where people hid Jews and resisters. These first few months of refusal of STO, and the "embryonic camps and groupings that resulted" contributed to the eventual emergence of the mystique and discourse of le maquis.

Politically motivated anti-fascists, immigrant workers on the run, the réfractaires and Spanish Civil War veterans, along with the leniency of the Vichy administration's pursuit of réfractaires, contributed to the emergence of an aggressive movement, with a combative discourse and a romantic mystique of rural revolt. The speed with which the term maquis spread was astonishing, since the concept did not exist in January 1943. By June, talk of the maquis made its way from south-eastern France to the plains of northern France. The Maquis eventually became the national service, due to the large influx of young people in revolt against the STO. This unification was due, in part, to Michel Brault, a Parisian lawyer, who headed the organization of the resisters in April 1943, and to the drafted circulars establishing the Maquis's charter. Within one month, 20,000 copies of the text — which did not exceed the size of a playing card — were distributed throughout the southern zone". Brault, in a report sent to London on 14 February 1944, listed the various elements available for action to the Allies and described the Maquis as "youths who have rebelled against the STO as well as men of all ages who have given up trying to live a normal life[...]. They totalled about 48,000."

Role
The Maquis de l'Ain, captained by Henri Petit (alias Romans), organized a network of camps in the dense forests in the mountainous regions of the Bugey and the lower regions of La Bresse, without creating a fixed camp. This gave The enemy would not be able to surprise the Maquis because the views from the mountains were extensive, but some enjoyed this advantage and stayed in the same sites for months, defying their own rules of mobility. Guerrilla warfare practised by the Maquis "created a psychosis of fear within the enemy [...], giving an impression of numbers and strength which was more illusory than real".

The Maquis de l'Ain's effectiveness was honed at the training school they opened at Gorges above Mongriffon in June 1943. Captain Romans described the situation: "The watchwords were explicit: no large concentrations of men. No pitched battles. Guerrilla warfare only! We had a few revolvers and some hunting rifles and were reduced to making sketches in order to teach the use of modern weapons. Early in July we received our first Sten machine gun. We kept taking it apart and putting it together until we could do it in record time, Then the gun was passed from one camp to another."

In the control for rural areas, the maquisards, in their role as the hunted, "gradually made the terrain of the hunt unpredictable for the hunters", and eventually dangerous. The Maquis's goal was to destabilize Vichy authority, and they did this by simultaneously making themselves, as well as Vichy authorities, the 'hunters' and the 'hunted'.

During the Allied invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord, the Maquis and other groups played some role in delaying the German mobilization. The French Resistance (FFI for Forces Françaises de l'Interieur, 'French Forces of the Interior') blew up railroad tracks and repeatedly attacked German Army equipment and garrison trains on their way to the Atlantic coast. Coded messages transmitted over Radio Londres, broadcast from the BBC, alerted the Maquis of the impending D-Day with seemingly meaningless messages such as "the crow will sing three times in the morning" read in a continuous flow over the British airwaves. As Allied troops advanced, the French Resistance rose against the Nazi occupation forces and their garrisons en masse. For example, Nancy Wake's group of 7,000 maquisards was involved in a pitched battle with 22,000 Germans on 20 June 1944. Some Maquis groups took no prisoners so some German soldiers preferred to surrender to Allied soldiers rather than maquisards.

The Allied offensive was slowed and the Germans were able to counterattack in southeast France. On the Vercors Massif, the Maquis du Vercors rose up with some 4,000 soldiers against the German occupiers, but was defeated with 600 casualties.

When General De Gaulle dismissed resistance organizations after the liberation of Paris, many maquisards returned to their homes though many also joined the new French army.

Equipment
Although the Maquis used whatever arms they could get, the groups affiliated with the Free French relied heavily on airdrops of weapons and explosives from the British SOE. SOE parachuted agents in with wireless sets (for radio communication) and dropped containers with various munitions including Sten guns, pencil detonators, plastic explosives, Welrod pistols (a silenced specialized assassination weapon favored by covert operatives) and assorted small arms such as pistols, rifles and sub-machine guns. The Maquis would listen to coded broadcasts by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) the night before each supply drop. The information they would receive included the amount of supply boxes that would be dropped and when to light the fire signals that mark the drop zones. The Maquis had to confirm through radio if they received the message in order to lessen the risk of the supplies getting into German hands.

The Maquis also used German weapons captured throughout the occupation; the Mauser 98k rifle and MP 40 submachine gun were very common. The French Militia (Milice française), which was well equipped by the French State, was also a target of Maquis actions wherever available.

Customs
The Maquis were clandestine groups which did not wear uniforms, so as to blend in the population. However, over time many started wearing the Basque beret because it was common enough not to arouse suspicion, but distinctive enough to be effective. In leadership and the more technical aspects of leading a resistance group women were often more involved in the Maquis than men, helping the front line fighters. It was very common for young educated women to be used as couriers from one Maquis group to another. Young women were chosen because they were more inconspicuous than men and could often pass through German checkpoints without being stopped or questioned. Allied operatives working with the Maquis described the women of the Maquis helping of the fighters as "the lifeblood of the resistance, furnishing information, passing instructions, and arranging for food and supplies."

Controversy
After the war, many individuals claimed membership in the Maquis to escape being labeled Nazi collaborators. Operations carried out by the Maquis were often inefficient and meant to grab attention, not destroy key military targets. Allied intelligence received reports that the Maquis would use explosives on targets that did not require them, to make their actions heard. Lack of centralization led to groups taking action to garner attention so that more members would join and they would receive more supplies from the Allied war effort. Some actions taken by these splintered groups were not always in favor of the larger war effort. Another controversy was their harsh punishment of German prisoners and French collaborators. In one instance recorded by an American OSS agent embedded in the Maquis, a group of fighters had captured three French men accused of collaborating with the Germans and giving them information about the Maquis location. The agent describes one man's punishment saying, "he was tied up in public before he was subsequently beaten and shot." There are also reports of French Maquis units which executed German prisoners.

Notable maquis

 * Maquis de l'Ain et du Haut-Jura
 * Maquis de Corrèze
 * Maquis de Fontjun in the Hérault
 * Georges Guingouin, Maquis du Limousin
 * Maquis des Glières in the French Alps
 * Maquis de l'Oisans in the French Alps
 * Maquis du Grésivaudan in the French Alps
 * Maquis du Vercors in the French Alps
 * Maquis du Limousin in the Massif Central
 * Maquis de Lozère directed by the German antifascist Otto Kühne
 * Maquis du Mont Mouchet in the Auvergne
 * Maquis de Picaussel in the Aude
 * Maquis de Saffré in Loire Atlantique
 * Maquis de Saint-Marcel in Brittany
 * Corps Franc du Sidobre (Tarn)
 * Maquis La Tourette in the Hérault created by Jean Bène
 * Maquis de Vabre (Tarn)
 * Maquis Vallier (Var)
 * Maquis des Vosges
 * Maquis de Rieumes in the Haute-Garonne
 * Corps Franc de la Montagne Noire in the Montagne Noire (Aude, Tarn, Haute-Garonne)
 * Mèo Maquis in Indochina, of which Vang Pao was a notable Hmong member operating in Laos. (The Hmong were formerly known by the exonym Meo)

title: Maquis (World War II)


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Stratemeyer Syndicate

The Stratemeyer Syndicate was a publishing company that produced a number of mystery book series for children, including Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, the various Tom Swift series, the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Boys, and others. It published and contracted the many pseudonymous authors who wrote the series from 1899 to 1987, when it was sold to Simon & Schuster.

History
Created by Edward Stratemeyer, the Stratemeyer Syndicate was the first book packager to have its books aimed at children, rather than adults. The Syndicate was wildly successful; at one time it was believed that the overwhelming majority of the books children read in the United States were Stratemeyer Syndicate books, based on a 1922 study of over 36,000 American children.

Stratemeyer's business acumen was in realizing that there was a huge, untapped market for children's books. The Stratemeyer Syndicate specialized in producing books that were meant primarily to be entertaining. In Stratemeyer's view, it was the thrill of feeling grown-up and the desire for a series of stories that made such reading attractive to children. Stratemeyer believed that this desire could be harnessed for profit. He founded the Stratemeyer Syndicate to produce books in an efficient, assembly-line fashion and to write them in such a way as to maximize their popularity.

The first series that Stratemeyer created was The Rover Boys, published under the pseudonym Arthur M. Winfield in 30 volumes between 1899 and 1926, which sold over five million copies. The Bobbsey Twins first appeared in 1904 under the pseudonym Laura Lee Hope, and Tom Swift in 1910 under the pseudonym Victor Appleton.

Stratemeyer published a number of books under his own name, but the books published under pseudonyms sold better. Stratemeyer realized that "he could offer more books each year if he dealt with several publishers and had the books published under a number of pseudonyms which he controlled." Stratemeyer explained his strategy to a publisher, writing that "[a] book brought out under another name would, I feel satisfied, do better than another Stratemeyer book. If this was brought out under my own name, the trade on new Stratemeyer books would simply be cut into four parts instead of three."

Some time in the first decade of the twentieth century Stratemeyer realized that he could no longer juggle multiple volumes of multiple series, and he began hiring ghostwriters, such as Mildred Benson, Josephine Lawrence, Howard R. Garis and Leslie McFarlane. Stratemeyer continued to write some books, while writing plot outlines for others.

While mystery elements were occasionally present in these early series, the Syndicate later specialized in children's mystery series. This trend began in 1911, when Stratemeyer wrote and published The Mansion of Mystery, under the pseudonym Chester K. Steele. Five more books were published in that mystery series, the last in 1928. These books were aimed at a somewhat older audience than his previous series. After that, the Syndicate focused on mystery series aimed at its younger base: The Hardy Boys, which first appeared in 1927, ghostwritten by Leslie McFarlane and others; and Nancy Drew, which first appeared in 1930, ghostwritten by Mildred Wirt Benson, Walter Karig, and others. Both series were immediate financial successes.

In 1930, Stratemeyer died, and the Syndicate was inherited by his two daughters, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Edna Stratemeyer Squier. Stratemeyer Squier sold her share to her sister Harriet within a few years. Harriet Stratemeyer introduced such series as The Dana Girls (1934), Tom Swift Jr., The Happy Hollisters, and many others. In the 1950s, Harriet began substantially revising old volumes in The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, updating them by removing references to outdated cultural elements, such as "roadster". Racial slurs and stereotypes were also removed, and in some cases (such as The Secret at Shadow Ranch and The Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion) entire plots were cast off and replaced with new ones. In part, these changes were motivated by a desire to make the books more up-to-date. Grosset & Dunlap, the primary publisher of Stratemeyer Syndicate books, requested that the books' racism be excised, a project that Adams felt was unnecessary. Grosset & Dunlap held firm; it had received an increasing number of letters from parents who were offended by the stereotypes present in the books, particularly in The Hardy Boys publications.

In the late 1970s, Adams decided it was time for Nancy and the Hardys to go into paperback, as the hardcover market was no longer what it had been. Grosset & Dunlap sued, citing "breach of contract, copyright infringement, and unfair competition". The ensuing case let the world know, for the first time, that the Syndicate existed; the Syndicate had always gone to great lengths to hide its existence from the public, and ghostwriters were contractually obliged never to reveal their authorship.

Grosset & Dunlap was awarded the rights to The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew volumes that it had published, but the Syndicate was judged free to take subsequent volumes elsewhere. Subsequent volumes were published by Simon & Schuster.

Adams died in 1982. In 1984, Simon & Schuster purchased the syndicate from its partners — Edward Stratemeyer Adams, Camilla Adams McClave, Patricia Adams Harr, Nancy Axelrod and Lilo Wuenn — and turned to Mega-Books, a book packager, to handle the writing process for new volumes.

Writing guidelines
All Stratemeyer Syndicate books were written under certain guidelines, based on practices Stratemeyer began with his first series, the Rover Boys.

 * All books would be part of a series.
 * To establish more quickly if a series was likely to be successful, the first several volumes would be published at once. These first volumes are often called "breeders".
 * The books would be written under a pseudonym. This would provide apparent continuity of authorship, even when an author died, and would disguise the fact that series were written by multiple ghostwriters and plot-outliners.
 * The books would look as much like contemporary adult books as possible, with similar bindings and typefaces.
 * The books would be of a predictable length.
 * Chapters and pages should end mid-situation, to increase the reader's desire to keep reading.
 * Each book would begin with a quick recap of all previous books in that series, in order to promote those books.
 * Books might also end with a preview of the next volume in the series: "Nancy ... could not help but wonder when she might encounter as strange a mystery as the recent one. Such a case was to confront her soon, The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes".
 * The books would be priced at 50 cents, rather than the more common 75 cents, $1.00, or $1.25.
 * Characters should not age or marry. Protagonists of early series such as the Rover Boys, Tom Swift, and Ruth Fielding grew up and married, and sales dropped afterward, prompting this rule.

Criticism
For decades, libraries refused to carry any Syndicate books, considering them to be unworthy trash. Series books were considered to "cause 'mental laziness,' induce a 'fatal sluggishness,' and 'intellectual torpor. Series books were considered to ruin a child's chances for gaining an appreciation of good literature (which was subsequently shown by one study not to be the case), and to undermine respect for authority: "Much of the contempt for social conventions ... is due to the reading of this poisonous sort of fiction."

Franklin K. Mathiews, chief librarian for the Boy Scouts of America, wrote that series books were a method, according to the title of one of his articles, for "Blowing Out the Boys' Brains", and psychologist G. Stanley Hall articulated one of the most common concerns by asserting that series books would ruin girls in particular by giving them "false views of [life] ... which will cloud her life with discontent in the future".

None of this hurt sales and Stratemeyer was unperturbed, even when his books were banned from the Newark Public Library as early as 1901, writing to a publisher: "Personally it does not matter much to me. ... Taking them out of the Library has more than tripled the sales in Newark."

Foreign publications
Some syndicate series were also reprinted in foreign countries. An early foreign version was a Ted Scott Flying Stories book, published in Germany in 1930 as Ted Scott Der Ozeanflieger. The artwork was generally changed when reprinted in other countries, and sometimes character names and other details were as well. For example, in Norway, translations of the Nancy Drew books were first published in 1941, the first European market to introduce the girl detective. “The translators changed the color of Nancy's car, shortened the text, and made the language easier to read; but they made no substantive changes” to the stories. By the 1970s, Nancy Drew stories had “been translated into Spanish, Swedish, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Icelandic.

Other series reprinted outside the States include The Dana Girls, The Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins (in Australia, France, Sweden, and the UK). These other series first appeared around the 1950s outside the United States.

The second Stratemeyer Syndicate series to be reprinted outside the United States appears to have been the first two books in the Don Sturdy series, although exact dates of printing are unknown. Those were The Desert of Mystery and The Big Snake Hunters. There are two British versions known of the latter book; both were printed by The Children's Press, one in the 1930s and the second, with different cover art, in the 1950s.

Project Gutenberg ebooks online
Victor Appleton; Richard Barnum; Gerald Breckenridge; Nicholas Carter; Lester Chadwick; Allen Chapman; Alice B. Emerson; Howard Roger Garis; Mabel C. Hawley; Laura Lee Hope; Gertrude W. Morrison; Margaret Penrose; Homer Randall; Roy Rockwood; Frank V. Webster; Arthur M. Winfield; Mildred A. Wirt (Benson); Clarence Young Not found 2023 as Gutenberg authors: Franklin W. Dixon; Carolyn Keene; Eugene Martin
 * Edward Stratemeyer

Archival collections

 * Stratemeyer Syndicate records at U. of Oregon (guide) at ArchivesWest
 * Stratemeyer Syndicate records (guide) at New York Public Library
 * Stratemeyer Syndicate records (guide) at Archives at Yale

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Stratemeyer Syndicate


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Biogas

Biogas is a gaseous renewable energy source produced from raw materials such as agricultural waste, manure, municipal waste, plant material, sewage, green waste, wastewater, and food waste. Biogas is produced by anaerobic digestion with anaerobic organisms or methanogens inside an anaerobic digester, biodigester or a bioreactor. The gas composition is primarily methane and carbon dioxide  and may have small amounts of hydrogen sulfide, moisture and siloxanes. The methane can be combusted or oxidized with oxygen. This energy release allows biogas to be used as a fuel; it can be used in fuel cells and for heating purpose, such as in cooking. It can also be used in a gas engine to convert the energy in the gas into electricity and heat.

After removal of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide it can be compressed in the same way as natural gas and used to power motor vehicles. In the United Kingdom, for example, biogas is estimated to have the potential to replace around 17% of vehicle fuel. It qualifies for renewable energy subsidies in some parts of the world. Biogas can be cleaned and upgraded to natural gas standards, when it becomes bio-methane. Biogas is considered to be a renewable resource because its production-and-use cycle is continuous, and it generates no net carbon dioxide. From a carbon perspective, as much carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere in the growth of the primary bio-resource as is released, when the material is ultimately converted to energy.

Production
Biogas is produced by microorganisms, such as methanogens and sulfate-reducing bacteria, performing anaerobic respiration. Biogas can refer to gas produced naturally and industrially.

Natural
In soil, methane is produced in anaerobic environments by methanogens, but is mostly consumed in aerobic zones by methanotrophs. Methane emissions result when the balance favors methanogens. Wetland soils are the main natural source of methane. Other sources include oceans, forest soils, termites, and wild ruminants.

Industrial
The purpose of industrial biogas production is the collection of biomethane, usually for fuel. Industrial biogas is produced either;
 * As landfill gas (LFG), which is produced by the decomposition of biodegradable waste inside a landfill due to chemical reactions and microbes, or
 * As digested gas, produced inside an anaerobic digester.

Bio-gas Plants
A biogas plant is the name often given to an anaerobic digester that treats farm wastes or energy crops. It can be produced using anaerobic digesters (air-tight tanks with different configurations). These plants can be fed with energy crops such as maize silage or biodegradable wastes including sewage sludge and food waste. During the process, the micro-organisms transform biomass waste into biogas (mainly methane and carbon dioxide) and digestate. Higher quantities of biogas can be produced when the wastewater is co-digested with other residuals from the dairy industry, sugar industry, or brewery industry. For example, while mixing 90% of wastewater from beer factory with 10% cow whey, the production of biogas was increased by 2.5 times compared to the biogas produced by wastewater from the brewery only.

Manufacturing of biogas from intentionally planted maize has been described as being unsustainable and harmful due to very concentrated, intense and soil eroding character of these plantations.

Key processes
There are two key processes: mesophilic and thermophilic digestion which is dependent on temperature. In experimental work at University of Alaska Fairbanks, a 1000-litre digester using psychrophiles harvested from "mud from a frozen lake in Alaska" has produced 200–300 liters of methane per day, about 20–30% of the output from digesters in warmer climates.

Dangers
The air pollution produced by biogas is similar to that of natural gas as when methane (a major constituent of biogas) is ignited for its usage as an energy source, Carbon dioxide is made as a product which is a greenhouse gas ( as described by this equation: + 2 →  + 2 ). The content of toxic hydrogen sulfide presents additional risks and has been responsible for serious accidents. Leaks of unburned methane are an additional risk, because methane is a potent greenhouse gas. A facility may leak 2% of the methane.

Biogas can be explosive when mixed in the ratio of one part biogas to 8–20 parts air. Special safety precautions have to be taken for entering an empty biogas digester for maintenance work. It is important that a biogas system never has negative pressure as this could cause an explosion. Negative gas pressure can occur if too much gas is removed or leaked; Because of this biogas should not be used at pressures below one column inch of water, measured by a pressure gauge.

Frequent smell checks must be performed on a biogas system. If biogas is smelled anywhere windows and doors should be opened immediately. If there is a fire the gas should be shut off at the gate valve of the biogas system.

Landfill gas
Landfill gas is produced by wet organic waste decomposing under anaerobic conditions in a similar way to biogas.

The waste is covered and mechanically compressed by the weight of the material that is deposited above. This material prevents oxygen exposure thus allowing anaerobic microbes to thrive. Biogas builds up and is slowly released into the atmosphere if the site has not been engineered to capture the gas. Landfill gas released in an uncontrolled way can be hazardous since it can become explosive when it escapes from the landfill and mixes with oxygen. The lower explosive limit is 5% methane and the upper is 15% methane.

The methane in biogas is 28 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Therefore, uncontained landfill gas, which escapes into the atmosphere may significantly contribute to the effects of global warming. In addition, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in landfill gas contribute to the formation of photochemical smog.

Technical
Biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) is a measure of the amount of oxygen required by aerobic micro-organisms to decompose the organic matter in a sample of material being used in the biodigester as well as the BOD for the liquid discharge allows for the calculation of the daily energy output from a biodigester.

Another term related to biodigesters is effluent dirtiness, which tells how much organic material there is per unit of biogas source. Typical units for this measure are in mg BOD/litre. As an example, effluent dirtiness can range between 800 and 1200 mg BOD/litre in Panama.

From 1 kg of decommissioned kitchen bio-waste, 0.45 m3 of biogas can be obtained. The price for collecting biological waste from households is approximately €70 per ton.

Composition
The composition of biogas varies depending upon the substrate composition, as well as the conditions within the anaerobic reactor (temperature, pH, and substrate concentration). Landfill gas typically has methane concentrations around 50%. Advanced waste treatment technologies can produce biogas with 55–75% methane, which for reactors with free liquids can be increased to 80–90% methane using in-situ gas purification techniques. As produced, biogas contains water vapor. The fractional volume of water vapor is a function of biogas temperature; correction of measured gas volume for water vapour content and thermal expansion is easily done via simple mathematics which yields the standardized volume of dry biogas.

For 1000 kg (wet weight) of input to a typical biodigester, total solids may be 30% of the wet weight while volatile suspended solids may be 90% of the total solids. Protein would be 20% of the volatile solids, carbohydrates would be 70% of the volatile solids, and finally fats would be 10% of the volatile solids.

Sulfur compounds
Toxic and foul smelling Hydrogen sulfide is the most common contaminant in biogas, but other sulfur-containing compounds, such as thiols may be present. Left in the biogas stream, hydrogen sulfide is corrosive and when combusted yields sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid, also corrosive and environmentally hazardous compounds.

Ammonia
Ammonia is produced from organic compounds containing nitrogen, such as the amino acids in proteins. If not separated from the biogas, combustion results in NOx emissions.

Siloxanes
In some cases, biogas contains siloxanes. They are formed from the anaerobic decomposition of materials commonly found in soaps and detergents. During combustion of biogas containing siloxanes, silicon is released and can combine with free oxygen or other elements in the combustion gas. Deposits are formed containing mostly silica or silicates  and can contain calcium, sulfur, zinc, phosphorus. Such white mineral deposits accumulate to a surface thickness of several millimeters and must be removed by chemical or mechanical means.

Practical and cost-effective technologies to remove siloxanes and other biogas contaminants are available.

Benefits of manure derived biogas
High levels of methane are produced when manure is stored under anaerobic conditions. During storage and when manure has been applied to the land, nitrous oxide is also produced as a byproduct of the denitrification process. Nitrous oxide is 320 times more aggressive as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and methane 25 times more than carbon dioxide. By converting cow manure into methane biogas via anaerobic digestion, the millions of cattle in the United States would be able to produce 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to power millions of homes across the United States. One cow can produce enough manure in one day to generate 3 kilowatt hours of electricity. Furthermore, by converting cattle manure into methane biogas instead of letting it decompose, global warming gases could be reduced by 99 million metric tons or 4%.

Applications

Biogas can be used for electricity production on sewage works, in a CHP gas engine, where the waste heat from the engine is conveniently used for heating the digester; cooking; space heating; water heating; and process heating. If compressed, it can replace compressed natural gas for use in vehicles, where it can fuel an internal combustion engine or fuel cells and is a much more effective displacer of carbon dioxide than the normal use in on-site CHP plants.

Biogas upgrading
Raw biogas produced from digestion is roughly 60% methane and 39% with trace elements of : inadequate for use in machinery. The corrosive nature of alone is enough to destroy the mechanisms.

Methane in biogas can be concentrated via a biogas upgrader to the same standards as fossil natural gas, which itself has to go through a cleaning process, and becomes biomethane. If the local gas network allows, the producer of the biogas may use their distribution networks. Gas must be very clean to reach pipeline quality and must be of the correct composition for the distribution network to accept. Carbon dioxide, water, hydrogen sulfide, and particulates must be removed if present.

There are four main methods of upgrading: water washing, pressure swing absorption, selexol absorption, and amine gas treating. In addition to these, the use of membrane separation technology for biogas upgrading is increasing, and there are already several plants operating in Europe and USA.

The most prevalent method is water washing where high pressure gas flows into a column where the carbon dioxide and other trace elements are scrubbed by cascading water running counter-flow to the gas. This arrangement could deliver 98% methane with manufacturers guaranteeing maximum 2% methane loss in the system. It takes roughly between 3% and 6% of the total energy output in gas to run a biogas upgrading system.

Biogas gas-grid injection
Gas-grid injection is the injection of biogas into the methane grid (natural gas grid). Until the breakthrough of micro combined heat and power two-thirds of all the energy produced by biogas power plants was lost (as heat). Using the grid to transport the gas to consumers, the energy can be used for on-site generation, resulting in a reduction of losses in the transportation of energy. Typical energy losses in natural gas transmission systems range from 1% to 2%; in electricity transmission they range from 5% to 8%.

Before being injected in the gas grid, biogas passes a cleaning process, during which it is upgraded to natural gas quality. During the cleaning process trace components harmful to the gas grid and the final users are removed.

Biogas in transport
If concentrated and compressed, it can be used in vehicle transportation. Compressed biogas is becoming widely used in Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany. A biogas-powered train, named Biogaståget Amanda (The Biogas Train Amanda), has been in service in Sweden since 2005. Biogas powers automobiles. In 1974, a British documentary film titled Sweet as a Nut detailed the biogas production process from pig manure and showed how it fueled a custom-adapted combustion engine. In 2007, an estimated 12,000 vehicles were being fueled with upgraded biogas worldwide, mostly in Europe.

Biogas is part of the wet gas and condensing gas (or air) category that includes mist or fog in the gas stream. The mist or fog is predominately water vapor that condenses on the sides of pipes or stacks throughout the gas flow. Biogas environments include wastewater digesters, landfills, and animal feeding operations (covered livestock lagoons).

Ultrasonic flow meters are one of the few devices capable of measuring in a biogas atmosphere. Most of thermal flow meters are unable to provide reliable data because the moisture causes steady high flow readings and continuous flow spiking, although there are single-point insertion thermal mass flow meters capable of accurately monitoring biogas flows with minimal pressure drop. They can handle moisture variations that occur in the flow stream because of daily and seasonal temperature fluctuations, and account for the moisture in the flow stream to produce a dry gas value.

Biogas generated heat/electricity
Biogas can be used in different types of internal combustion engines, such as the Jenbacher or Caterpillar gas engines. Other internal combustion engines such as gas turbines are suitable for the conversion of biogas into both electricity and heat. The digestate is the remaining inorganic matter that was not transformed into biogas. It can be used as an agricultural fertiliser.

Biogas can be used as the fuel in the system of producing biogas from agricultural wastes and co-generating heat and electricity in a combined heat and power (CHP) plant. Unlike the other green energy such as wind and solar, the biogas can be quickly accessed on demand. The global warming potential can also be greatly reduced when using biogas as the fuel instead of fossil fuel.

However, the acidification and eutrophication potentials produced by biogas are 25 and 12 times higher respectively than fossil fuel alternatives. This impact can be reduced by using correct combination of feedstocks, covered storage for digesters and improved techniques for retrieving escaped material. Overall, the results still suggest that using biogas can lead to significant reduction in most impacts compared to fossil fuel alternative. The balance between environmental damage and green house gas emission should still be considered while implicating the system.

Technological advancements
Projects such as NANOCLEAN are nowadays developing new ways to produce biogas more efficiently, using iron oxide nanoparticles in the processes of organic waste treatment. This process can triple the production of biogas.

Biogas and Sanitation
Faecal Sludge is a product of onsite sanitation systems. Post collection and transportation, Faecal sludge can be treated with sewage in a conventional treatment plant, or otherwise it can be treated independently in a faecal sludge treatment plant. Faecal sludge can also be co-treated with organic solid waste in composting or in an anaerobic digestion system. Biogas can be generated through anaerobic digestion in the treatment of faecal sludge.

The appropriate management of excreta and its valorisation through the production of biogas from faecal sludge helps mitigate the effects of poorly managed excreta such as waterborne diseases and water and environmental pollution.

The Resource Recovery and Reuse (RRR) ) is a subprogram of the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) dedicated to applied research on the safe recovery of water, nutrients and energy from domestic and agro-industrial waste streams. They believe using waste as energy would be good financially and would tackle sanitation, health and environmental issues.

European Union
The European Union has legislation regarding waste management and landfill sites called the Landfill Directive.

Countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany now have legislation in force that provides farmers with long-term revenue and energy security.

The EU mandates that internal combustion engines with biogas have ample gas pressure to optimize combustion, and within the European Union ATEX centrifugal fan units built in accordance with the European directive 2014–34/EU (previously 94/9/EG) are obligatory. These centrifugal fan units, for example Combimac, Meidinger AG or Witt & Sohn AG are suitable for use in Zone 1 and 2.

United States
The United States legislates against landfill gas as it contains VOCs. The United States Clean Air Act and Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) requires landfill owners to estimate the quantity of non-methane organic compounds (NMOCs) emitted. If the estimated NMOC emissions exceeds 50 tonnes per year, the landfill owner is required to collect the gas and treat it to remove the entrained NMOCs. That usually means burning it. Because of the remoteness of landfill sites, it is sometimes not economically feasible to produce electricity from the gas.

There are a variety of grants and loans the support the development of anaerobic digestor systems. The Rural Energy for American Program provides loan financing and grant funding for biogas systems, as does the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Conservation Stewardship Program, and Conservation Loan Program.

United States
With the many benefits of biogas, it is starting to become a popular source of energy and is starting to be used in the United States more. In 2003, the United States consumed 147 e12BTU of energy from "landfill gas", about 0.6% of the total U.S. natural gas consumption. Methane biogas derived from cow manure is being tested in the U.S. According to a 2008 study, collected by the Science and Children magazine, methane biogas from cow manure would be sufficient to produce 100 billion kilowatt hours enough to power millions of homes across America. Furthermore, methane biogas has been tested to prove that it can reduce 99 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions or about 4% of the greenhouse gases produced by the United States.

The number of farm-based digesters increased by 21% in 2021 according to the American Biogas Council. In Vermont biogas generated on dairy farms was included in the CVPS Cow Power program. The program was originally offered by Central Vermont Public Service Corporation as a voluntary tariff and now with a recent merger with Green Mountain Power is now the GMP Cow Power Program. Customers can elect to pay a premium on their electric bill, and that premium is passed directly to the farms in the program. In Sheldon, Vermont, Green Mountain Dairy has provided renewable energy as part of the Cow Power program. It started when the brothers who own the farm, Bill and Brian Rowell, wanted to address some of the manure management challenges faced by dairy farms, including manure odor, and nutrient availability for the crops they need to grow to feed the animals. They installed an anaerobic digester to process the cow and milking center waste from their 950 cows to produce renewable energy, a bedding to replace sawdust, and a plant-friendly fertilizer. The energy and environmental attributes are sold to the GMP Cow Power program. On average, the system run by the Rowells produces enough electricity to power 300 to 350 other homes. The generator capacity is about 300 kilowatts.

In Hereford, Texas, cow manure is being used to power an ethanol power plant. By switching to methane biogas, the ethanol power plant has saved 1000 barrels of oil a day. Over all, the power plant has reduced transportation costs and will be opening many more jobs for future power plants that will rely on biogas.

In Oakley, Kansas, an ethanol plant considered to be one of the largest biogas facilities in North America is using integrated manure utilization system (IMUS) to produce heat for its boilers by utilizing feedlot manure, municipal organics and ethanol plant waste. At full capacity the plant is expected to replace 90% of the fossil fuel used in the manufacturing process of ethanol and methanol.

In California, the Southern California Gas Company has advocated for mixing biogas into existing natural gas pipelines. However, California state officials have taken the position that biogas is "better used in hard-to-electrify sectors of the economy-- like aviation, heavy industry and long-haul trucking".

Europe
The level of development varies greatly in Europe. While countries such as Germany, Austria, Sweden and Italy are fairly advanced in their use of biogas, there is a vast potential for this renewable energy source in the rest of the continent, especially in Eastern Europe. MT-Energie is a German biogas technology company operating in the field of renewable energies. Different legal frameworks, education schemes and the availability of technology are among the prime reasons behind this untapped potential. Another challenge for the further progression of biogas has been negative public perception.

In February 2009, the European Biogas Association (EBA) was founded in Brussels as a non-profit organisation to promote the deployment of sustainable biogas production and use in Europe. EBA's strategy defines three priorities: establish biogas as an important part of Europe's energy mix, promote source separation of household waste to increase the gas potential, and support the production of biomethane as vehicle fuel. In July 2013, it had 60 members from 24 countries across Europe.

UK
, there are about 130 non-sewage biogas plants in the UK. Most are on-farm, and some larger facilities exist off-farm, which are taking food and consumer wastes.

On 5 October 2010, biogas was injected into the UK gas grid for the first time. Sewage from over 30,000 Oxfordshire homes is sent to Didcot sewage treatment works, where it is treated in an anaerobic digestor to produce biogas, which is then cleaned to provide gas for approximately 200 homes.

In 2015 the Green-Energy company Ecotricity announced their plans to build three grid-injecting digesters.

Italy
In Italy the biogas industry first started in 2008, thanks to the introduction of advantageous feed tariffs. They were later replaced by feed-in premiums and the preference was given to by products and farming waste and leading to stagnation in biogas production and derived heat and electricity since 2012. , in Italy there are more than 200 biogas plants with a production of about 1.2 GW

Germany
Germany is Europe's biggest biogas producer and the market leader in biogas technology. In 2010 there were 5,905 biogas plants operating throughout the country: Lower Saxony, Bavaria, and the eastern federal states are the main regions. Most of these plants are employed as power plants. Usually the biogas plants are directly connected with a CHP which produces electric power by burning the bio methane. The electrical power is then fed into the public power grid. In 2010, the total installed electrical capacity of these power plants was 2,291 MW. The electricity supply was approximately 12.8 TWh, which is 12.6% of the total generated renewable electricity.

Biogas in Germany is primarily extracted by the co-fermentation of energy crops (called 'NawaRo', an abbreviation of nachwachsende Rohstoffe, German for renewable resources) mixed with manure. The main crop used is corn. Organic waste and industrial and agricultural residues such as waste from the food industry are also used for biogas generation. In this respect, biogas production in Germany differs significantly from the UK, where biogas generated from landfill sites is most common.

Biogas production in Germany has developed rapidly over the last 20 years. The main reason is the legally created frameworks. Government support of renewable energy started in 1991 with the Electricity Feed-in Act (StrEG). This law guaranteed the producers of energy from renewable sources the feed into the public power grid, thus the power companies were forced to take all produced energy from independent private producers of green energy. In 2000 the Electricity Feed-in Act was replaced by the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG). This law even guaranteed a fixed compensation for the produced electric power over 20 years. The amount of around 8¢/kWh gave farmers the opportunity to become energy suppliers and gain a further source of income.

The German agricultural biogas production was given a further push in 2004 by implementing the so-called NawaRo-Bonus. This is a special payment given for the use of renewable resources, that is, energy crops. In 2007 the German government stressed its intention to invest further effort and support in improving the renewable energy supply to provide an answer on growing climate challenges and increasing oil prices by the 'Integrated Climate and Energy Programme'.

This continual trend of renewable energy promotion induces a number of challenges facing the management and organisation of renewable energy supply that has also several impacts on the biogas production. The first challenge to be noticed is the high area-consuming of the biogas electric power supply. In 2011 energy crops for biogas production consumed an area of circa 800,000 ha in Germany. This high demand of agricultural areas generates new competitions with the food industries that did not exist hitherto. Moreover, new industries and markets were created in predominately rural regions entailing different new players with an economic, political and civil background. Their influence and acting has to be governed to gain all advantages this new source of energy is offering. Finally biogas will furthermore play an important role in the German renewable energy supply if good governance is focused.

Developing countries
Domestic biogas plants convert livestock manure and night soil into biogas and slurry, the fermented manure. This technology is feasible for small-holders with livestock producing 50 kg manure per day, an equivalent of about 6 pigs or 3 cows. This manure has to be collectable to mix it with water and feed it into the plant. Toilets can be connected. Another precondition is the temperature that affects the fermentation process. With an optimum at 36 °C the technology especially applies for those living in a (sub) tropical climate. This makes the technology for small holders in developing countries often suitable.

Depending on size and location, a typical brick made fixed dome biogas plant can be installed at the yard of a rural household with the investment between US$300 to $500 in Asian countries and up to $1400 in the African context. A high quality biogas plant needs minimum maintenance costs and can produce gas for at least 15–20 years without major problems and re-investments. For the user, biogas provides clean cooking energy, reduces indoor air pollution, and reduces the time needed for traditional biomass collection, especially for women and children. The slurry is a clean organic fertilizer that potentially increases agricultural productivity. In developing countries, it was also determined that the use of biogas leads to a 20% reduction in GHG emissions compared with GHG emissions due to firewood. Moreover, GHG emissions of 384.1 kg CO2-eq·y−1 per animal could be prevented.

Energy is an important part of modern society and can serve as one of the most important indicators of socio-economic development. As much as there have been advancements in technology, even so, some three billion people, primarily in the rural areas of developing countries, continue to access their energy needs for cooking through traditional means by burning biomass resources like firewood, crop residues and animal dung in crude traditional stoves.

Domestic biogas technology is a proven and established technology in many parts of the world, especially Asia. Several countries in this region have embarked on large-scale programmes on domestic biogas, such as China and India.

The Netherlands Development Organisation, SNV, supports national programmes on domestic biogas that aim to establish commercial-viable domestic biogas sectors in which local companies market, install and service biogas plants for households. In Asia, SNV is working in Nepal, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Pakistan and Indonesia, and in Africa; Rwanda, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Benin and Cameroon.

In South Africa a prebuilt Biogas system is manufactured and sold. One key feature is that installation requires less skill and is quicker to install as the digester tank is premade plastic.

India
Biogas in India has been traditionally based on dairy manure as feed stock and these "gobar" gas plants have been in operation for a long period of time, especially in rural India. In the last 2–3 decades, research organisations with a focus on rural energy security have enhanced the design of the systems resulting in newer efficient low cost designs such as the Deenabandhu model.

The Deenabandhu Model is a new biogas-production model popular in India. (Deenabandhu means "friend of the helpless".) The unit usually has a capacity of 2 to 3 cubic metres. It is constructed using bricks or by a ferrocement mixture. In India, the brick model costs slightly more than the ferrocement model; however, India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy offers some subsidy per model constructed.

Biogas which is mainly methane/natural gas can also be used for generating protein rich cattle, poultry and fish feed in villages economically by cultivating Methylococcus capsulatus bacteria culture with tiny land and water foot print. The carbon dioxide gas produced as by product from these plants can be put to use in cheaper production of algae oil or spirulina from algaculture particularly in tropical countries like India which can displace the prime position of crude oil in near future. Union government of India is implementing many schemes to utilise productively the agro waste or biomass in rural areas to uplift rural economy and job potential. With these plants, the non-edible biomass or waste of edible biomass is converted in to high value products without any water pollution or green house gas (GHG) emissions.

LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) is a key source of cooking fuel in urban India and its prices have been increasing along with the global fuel prices. Also the heavy subsidies provided by the successive governments in promoting LPG as a domestic cooking fuel has become a financial burden renewing the focus on biogas as a cooking fuel alternative in urban establishments. This has led to the development of prefabricated digester for modular deployments as compared to RCC and cement structures which take a longer duration to construct. Renewed focus on process technology like the Biourja process model has enhanced the stature of medium and large scale anaerobic digester in India as a potential alternative to LPG as primary cooking fuel.

In India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh biogas produced from the anaerobic digestion of manure in small-scale digestion facilities is called gobar gas; it is estimated that such facilities exist in over 2 million households in India, 50,000 in Bangladesh and thousands in Pakistan, particularly North Punjab, due to the thriving population of livestock. The digester is an airtight circular pit made of concrete with a pipe connection. The manure is directed to the pit, usually straight from the cattle shed. The pit is filled with a required quantity of wastewater. The gas pipe is connected to the kitchen fireplace through control valves. The combustion of this biogas has very little odour or smoke. Owing to simplicity in implementation and use of cheap raw materials in villages, it is one of the most environmentally sound energy sources for rural needs. One type of these system is the Sintex Digester. Some designs use vermiculture to further enhance the slurry produced by the biogas plant for use as compost.

In Pakistan, the Rural Support Programmes Network is running the Pakistan Domestic Biogas Programme which has installed 5,360 biogas plants and has trained in excess of 200 masons on the technology and aims to develop the Biogas Sector in Pakistan.

In Nepal, the government provides subsidies to build biogas plant at home.

China
As of at least 2023, China is both the world's largest producer and largest consumer of household biogas.

The Chinese have experimented with the applications of biogas since 1958. Around 1970, China had installed 6,000,000 digesters in an effort to make agriculture more efficient. During the last few years, technology has met high growth rates. This seems to be the earliest developments in generating biogas from agricultural waste.

The rural biogas construction in China has shown an increased development trend. The exponential growth of energy supply caused by rapid economic development and severe haze condition in China have led biogas to become the better eco-friendly energy for the rural areas. In Qing county, Hebei Province, the technology of using crop straw as a main material to generate biogas is currently developing.

China had 26.5 million biogas plants, with an output of 10.5 billion cubic meter biogas until 2007. The annual biogas output has increased to 248 billion cubic meter in 2010. The Chinese government had supported and funded rural biogas projects. As of 2023, more than 30 million rural Chinese households use biogas digesters.

During the winter, the biogas production in northern regions of China is lower. This is caused by the lack of heat control technology for digesters thus the co-digestion of different feedstock failed to complete in the cold environment.

Zambia
Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia, has two million inhabitants with over half of the population residing in peri-urban areas. The majority of this population use pit latrines as toilets generating approximately 22,680 tons of fecal sludge per annum. This sludge is inadequately managed: Over 60% of the generated faecal sludge remains within the residential environment thereby compromising both the environment and public health.

In the face of research work and implementation of biogas having started as early as in the 1980s, Zambia is lagging behind in the adoption and use of biogas in the sub-Saharan Africa. Animal manure and crop residues are required for the provision of energy for cooking and lighting. Inadequate funding, absence of policy, regulatory framework and strategies on biogas, unfavorable investor monetary policy, inadequate expertise, lack of awareness of the benefits of biogas technology among leaders, financial institutions and locals, resistance to change due cultural and traditions of the locals, high installation and maintenance costs of biogas digesters, inadequate research and development, improper management and lack of monitoring of installed digesters, complexity of the carbon market, lack of incentives and social equity are among the challenges that have impeded the acquiring and sustainable implementation of domestic biogas production in Zambia.

Associations

 * World Biogas Association (https://www.worldbiogasassociation.org/)
 * American Biogas Council (https://americanbiogascouncil.org/)
 * Canadian Biogas Association (https://www.biogasassociation.ca/)
 * European Biogas Association
 * German Biogas Association
 * Indian Biogas Association

Society and culture
In the 1985 Australian film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome the post-apocalyptic settlement Barter town is powered by a central biogas system based upon a piggery. As well as providing electricity, methane is used to power Barter's vehicles.

"Cow Town", written in the early 1940s, discusses the travails of a city vastly built on cow manure and the hardships brought upon by the resulting methane biogas. Carter McCormick, an engineer from a town outside the city, is sent in to figure out a way to utilize this gas to help power, rather than suffocate, the city.

Contemporary biogas production provides new opportunities for skilled employment, drawing on the development of new technologies.

title: Biogas


text:
Talk:Maquis (Star Trek)

Comment
Is there any evidence in Roddenberry's works to show where he found the Maquis name? Saying offhandedly that he used the WW2 model strikes me as speculative. --Eclecticology, Monday, June 3, 2002

Im pretty sure Roddenberry was dead by the time the maquis appeared in star trek.

Based on ST:VOY The Killing Game, which was set in WW2 France, they seem to have based the name on the French Maquis. The Maquis debuted in The Maquis, Part 1 in 1994, after Gene Roddenberry's death in 1991. - Ke4roh 00:39, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The French or the Spanish maquis. Check both Maquis (World War II) and Spanish Maquis. I think it's quite obvious where the went to look for "inspiration" for the name... ;) Swamp Greetings (talk) 12:54, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

It says here that there is criticism of the Maquis being irrational, clinging to ceded colony worlds when they could have been painlessly relocated to any of thousands of other colony worlds. In the real world, how many conflicts are there that arise from irrational reasons? I'd say that it is a very accurate depiction of human nature. Tabun1015 04:40, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

 * The "book title to be confirmed" bit (under Parallels) still needs to be updated/fixed, sorry I can't elaborate here myself as I'm unfamiliar with the ST-based novels. 68.233.12.105 23:42, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Comparing the Maquis to Zapatistas and Al Qaeda and asserting that Eddington's statement reflects a rejection of neo-liberalism is entirely POV. One could easily argue the exact opposite, and say that the Maquis in general and Eddington in particular are extreme neo-liberal anarcho-capitalists that have rejected Federation collectivism and resorted to extreme use of force in order to protect property rights. I am removing the offending segment from the entry. -- SegPhault

The name may have been based on the WWII maquis, but surely the story is at least a little inspired by Cherryh's Mazianni, from her Alliance/Union universe? The idea is exactly the same: colonies abandoned, some locals refuse to evacuate, and a quasi-military force forms to protect them. Cherryh is such a widely read influence in space opera it's hard to see how a science fiction writing team could not have known this. I always thought it was a nod to her influence, I'm surprised to not see it noted here. Baron ridiculous (talk) 04:02, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Seska?
Wasn't Seska a Cardassian infiltrator? If she's going to be listed you might as well put Tuvok in there, as he did the same thing for the Federation. Zkissane

Any source on the Israeli-Palestinian reference?
Is there any source for the Israeli-Palestinian reference?
 * Sounds like a POV statement to me. It should be edited out. 84.137.59.159 11:41, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree. Not sure if it's POV, but definitely speculative. Theshibboleth 00:47, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Non-canon Ending
It mentions that in a novelization of the Voyager finale that some ex-Maquis on Voyager joined the Federation to fight the Dominion. That's kind of odd since the war had been over for well over a year in Star Trek. Seems that either the book author was completely ignorant of Star Trek, or whoever posted that made a bad speculation.

TNG
My recollection is that the Maquis was originally introduced on The Next Generation. If not, they were at least featured in several episodes concurrently with their appearance on DS9. However, this article does not mention any link to the TNG series.-PK9 19:18, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

 * Preemptive Strike(TNG), the only TNG ep in which the Maquis appeared, premiered on 5.16.94. The Maquis part I, the first DS9 ep in which they appeared, premiered on 4.24.94.  So it would appear that they first appeared on DS9 three weeks before they appeared on TNG. Nightscream 01:05, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

No, the first reference to the Maquis was in the 5th season episode "Ro Karen", which aired before DS9 even began BrandenburgHorse (talk) 07:17, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

That Autocorrected from "Ro Laren" BrandenburgHorse (talk) 07:18, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Name origin
Regarding the origin of the inspiration of the phase "maquis": I can't find any reference in these texts to inspiration relating to the Spanish Maquis. If the editor can provide a specific quote from either licensed or third-party material substantiating such a claim, that's swell; otherwise, the assertion is unfounded. Yes, the groups share a name, but assertion a connection between the Star Trek group and the Spanish Maquis appears merely to be an inference. --EEMIV (talk) 22:31, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The STE says, "The name Maquis was used by members of the French underground in World War II."
 * DS9 companion reads the Maquis "was a name used for French freedom fighters during World War II"
 * "A Vision of the Future" by Stephen Poe reads (i.e. third-party material, not stemming from a license), "The search for a twentieth-century parallel to the outlaw group's identity eventually lead to a band of French resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied France during World War II known as the Maquis."
 * Star Trek 101 by Terry Erdmann reads, "They called themselves the Maquis, after members of the French underground who fought against the Nazis in World War II."

Not one mention of Bajor?
Does anyone find it just a little odd that you won't find any mention of the Bajorans in this article? I suspect Cardassian hackers. BrandenburgHorse (talk) 07:20, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

TNG aired before DS9
> first introduced in the 1994 episode "The Maquis" of the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and subsequently appearing in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager.

This is incorrect because TNG first introduced the Maquis in Journey's End (Star Trek: The Next Generation) in March 1994, and before DS9 aired The Maquis (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) in April 1994, therefore they were introduced in TNG before DS9 — Preceding unsigned comment added by SemicolonExpected (talk • contribs) 18:15, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Maquis (Star Trek)