After a few months delay, the world's first biogas-powered passenger train is finally in formal operation in Southeast coast of Sweden.

According to report from Swedish Daily and Swedish Biogas who owns the train, the successful operation of the biogas train shows that there will be no electricity needed and the cost will be eventually reduced by one third.

The biogas-powered train Amenda has been built from a diesel engine train which was manufactured in 1981. The engine is replaced by two Volvo engines that can be filled with biogas. It has 54 seats in each car and can run 600 kilometers in a stretch at a maximum speed of 130 kilometers per hour. The train shuttles between Linkoping, south of Stockholm and eastern Baltic coast city Vastervik on weekdays. This was a two year long pilot project between Swedish Biogas company, SJ Ostgotatrafiken and Kalmar Pump Traffic companies.

Anders Lennartsson, development manager from Ostgotatrafiken said they also planned to change all the diesel-driven trains in Sweden into biogas-powered ones.

Biogas is a clean fuel which does not bring any new carbon-dioxide to the air.

"Biogas is the future fuel which is specially distributed to train. This will be very environmentally friendly as it is not only clean, but also has lower sound level to passengers and environment. " said Richard Wester, environment coordinator of Vastervik city.

Biogas tankers are now in Linkoping but Vastervik will gradually get its own gas-production. Purification work will be modernized by autumn and they plan to have a production capacity of about one million cubic meters biogas for clean vehicles per year. Locally produced biogas will help further reduce carbon-dioxide emission to the environment, where they plan to achieve carbon neutral. In addition the city plans to organize more environmentally friendly activities.

"We hope that by autumn we can begin to change many car engines so that they can use biogas. Within 10 years or even earlier, we think we will turn all the office cars, city buses and travel buses and school buses into biogas-driven. "said Richard Wester.

The biogas is in fact produced from dead cow's organs, the fat and the guts by decomposing them. Swedish Meat company is the source of this biogas tankers for the train. And it is not so easy for all these results. said Anders. The over 1.7 million US dollar project was scheduled to finish by last September, but it has been delayed for about half a year due to some difficulties.

It's reported that Sweden already has about 800 buses and thousands of cars running on a mixture of petrol and either biogas or natural gas.

All the buses including waste-collecting bus in Linkoping are driven by biogas from waste burning.

Sweden has greatly encouraged reduction of oil use by all kinds of measures. For example, if one buys a green car which uses ethanol or biogas, you will enjoy free parking in Stockholm and avoid the headache of parking and paying a fortune for it.

Currently 25% of energy use in Sweden is from biomass.

By 2050, Sweden plans to become a fossil-fuel free country.

Biogas production started in China and India in the 18th century, Sweden started to be interested in biogas production in the 1970s. They plan to expand the biogas train in India.

By Chen Xuefei, People's Daily Online Correspondent in Stockholm