Green Energy (Renewable Energy): Biomass and Biofuel in China
From Wikipedia
What's biomass? Biomass, as a renewable energy source, refers to living and recently dead biological material that can be used as fuel or for industrial production.
What's biofuel? Biofuel is defined as solid, liquid or gaseous fuel obtained from relatively recently lifeless biological material and is different from relic fuels, which are derived from long dead biological material.
China emerged as the world's third largest producer of ethanol bio-fuels (after the U.S. and Brazil) as of the end of the 10th Five Year Plan Period in 2005. At present ethanol accounts for 20% of total automotive fuel consumption in China.
In the 11th Five Year Plan period (2006 through 2010) China plans to develop 6 million tpy of fuel ethanol capacity, which is expected to grow to 15 million tpy by 2020. Despite this level of production, experts say that there will be no threat to food security, though there will be an increasing number of farmers who will be "farming oil" if the price of crude oil continues to increase.
Based on planned ethanol projects in some provinces in China, the output of corn would be insufficient to provide the raw material for those plants in those provinces. In the recently published World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expressed concern that there would be increasing competition worldwide between bio-fuels and food consumption for agricultural products and that that competition likely would continue to result in increases in prices of crops.
Work has begun on the RMB250 million Kaiyou Green Energy Biomass (Rice Husks) Power Generating project located in the Suqian City Economic Development Zone in Jiangsu Province. The Kaiyou Green Energy Biomass Power project will generate 144 million kwh/year and use 200,000 tpy of crop waste as inputs.
Bioenergy is also used at the domestic level in China, both in biomass stoves and by producing biogas from animal manure.
