China mulls switch to non-food crops for ethanol
China may entirely switch to non-food energy crops such as cassava, sweet potato, sorghum and cellulose crops (grasses, trees) for the production of ethanol fuel as a substitute for petroleum, a government official said, reiterating considerations expressed earlier. The development of second-generation biofuel technologies will be encouraged, whereas first-generation fuels will be phased out gradually.
The People's Republic considers a moratorium on approvals for ethanol projects that rely on the use of food grains such as corn, an official of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) told a seminar on China's fuel ethanol development held in Beijing on Saturday. "Food-based ethanol fuel will not be the direction for China," said Xu Dingming, vice director of the Office of the National Energy Leading Group, who was also at the seminar. At the same event, an official of the NDRC also announced the country may discontinue coal-to-liquids projects because they are energy intensive and contribute greatly to carbon dioxide emissions (earlier post).
China has been trying to avoid occupation of arable land, consumption of large amounts of grain and damages to the environment in developing the renewable energies. This is in line with expectations. Scientists have found that, contrary to Latin America, Africa and South East Asia & the Pacific (with Australia), China has a small biofuel production potential (previous post). Given the large potential for international biofuels trade, the People's Republic may thus become an importer of sustainable biofuels produced in other countries.
Currently there are four enterprises engaged in producing corn-based ethanol in China. They would be asked to switch to non-food materials gradually, according to the NDRC official who declined to be named:
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: non-food crops :: cassava :: sorghum :: sweet potato :: biomass :: cellulose :: China ::
The four enterprises are located in Jilin, Heilongjiang, Henan and Anhui and have a combined production capacity of 1.02 million tons of corn-based ethanol per year.
The country has become a big producer and consumer of ethanol fuel in the world after the United States, Brazil and European Union, according to the NDRC official.
China Oil and Food Corporation (COFCO), the country's largest oil and food importer and exporter, would focus on sorghum in the production of non-food-based ethanol fuel, said Yu Xubo, president of COFCO at the seminar.
COFCO, which owns the Heilongjiang enterprise and has a twenty-percent stake in the Anhui enterprise, aims to produce five million tons of ethanol fuel based on sorghum in the near future.
COFCO is also leading the way in developing cellulosic ethanol fuel under a cooperation agreement with Denmark-based Novozymes, world leader on research into the key enzymes needed in large-scale production of cellulosic ethanol. The current cost for producing ethanol fuel from cellulosic biomass, often residues which are discarded by farmers, is still too high. Novozymes is working on the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol both in the United States and China.
"We are optimistic about China's prospect of making it work ahead of the U.S., as the cost of collecting the stalks of corn are much cheaper in China," said Steen Riisgaard, president and CEO of Novozymes.
There is much opposition both in China and in the world to corn-based ethanol fuel, which is believed will lead to higher corn price. Many non-food crops are available for the production of biofuels, as well as vast tracts of land in the subtropics and the tropics that can be used to grow energy crops.
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The People's Republic considers a moratorium on approvals for ethanol projects that rely on the use of food grains such as corn, an official of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) told a seminar on China's fuel ethanol development held in Beijing on Saturday. "Food-based ethanol fuel will not be the direction for China," said Xu Dingming, vice director of the Office of the National Energy Leading Group, who was also at the seminar. At the same event, an official of the NDRC also announced the country may discontinue coal-to-liquids projects because they are energy intensive and contribute greatly to carbon dioxide emissions (earlier post).
China has been trying to avoid occupation of arable land, consumption of large amounts of grain and damages to the environment in developing the renewable energies. This is in line with expectations. Scientists have found that, contrary to Latin America, Africa and South East Asia & the Pacific (with Australia), China has a small biofuel production potential (previous post). Given the large potential for international biofuels trade, the People's Republic may thus become an importer of sustainable biofuels produced in other countries.
Currently there are four enterprises engaged in producing corn-based ethanol in China. They would be asked to switch to non-food materials gradually, according to the NDRC official who declined to be named:
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: non-food crops :: cassava :: sorghum :: sweet potato :: biomass :: cellulose :: China ::
The four enterprises are located in Jilin, Heilongjiang, Henan and Anhui and have a combined production capacity of 1.02 million tons of corn-based ethanol per year.
The country has become a big producer and consumer of ethanol fuel in the world after the United States, Brazil and European Union, according to the NDRC official.
China Oil and Food Corporation (COFCO), the country's largest oil and food importer and exporter, would focus on sorghum in the production of non-food-based ethanol fuel, said Yu Xubo, president of COFCO at the seminar.
COFCO, which owns the Heilongjiang enterprise and has a twenty-percent stake in the Anhui enterprise, aims to produce five million tons of ethanol fuel based on sorghum in the near future.
COFCO is also leading the way in developing cellulosic ethanol fuel under a cooperation agreement with Denmark-based Novozymes, world leader on research into the key enzymes needed in large-scale production of cellulosic ethanol. The current cost for producing ethanol fuel from cellulosic biomass, often residues which are discarded by farmers, is still too high. Novozymes is working on the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol both in the United States and China.
"We are optimistic about China's prospect of making it work ahead of the U.S., as the cost of collecting the stalks of corn are much cheaper in China," said Steen Riisgaard, president and CEO of Novozymes.
There is much opposition both in China and in the world to corn-based ethanol fuel, which is believed will lead to higher corn price. Many non-food crops are available for the production of biofuels, as well as vast tracts of land in the subtropics and the tropics that can be used to grow energy crops.
Article continues
Monday, June 11, 2007
Carbon negative biofuels and biochar win UN World Environment Day Award
A revolutionary synergy
The group of researchers demonstrated (earlier post) that biofuels can help mitigate climate change by making use of a carbon sequestration technique known as 'terra preta'. The idea is relatively simple: a stream of biomass is converted into liquid biofuels (bio-oil and their refined products) via pyrolysis, whereas the biochar (agrichar) that is co-produced in the process is ploughed into agricultural soils, which get a boost in fertility and water absorption capacities.
The result is that the biofuels become carbon negative - which means their use can take historic CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere - while the (energy) crops grown on biochar improved soils that now act as carbon sinks see their yields increase. The team's research showed a spectacular doubling and even tripling of yields from crops grown on such 'dark earth' soils.
Adriana Downie, who accepted the award for Best Energies, said the commercial uptake of the Best pyrolysis technology will result in significant carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas mitigation. “Adoption of the technology will deliver long-term sustainability benefits of increased soil health and therefore agricultural productivity.”
The slow pyrolysis technology developed by Best Energies is particularly exciting because it not only produces a renewable energy to displace the use of fossil fuels, but it also produces a very stable form of solid carbon which can be sequestered over the long term in soils.
This process has been developed by Best Energies with support from the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change and involves heating green waste or other biomass without oxygen to generate renewable energy and a high carbon char product. Best Energies has a fully integrated pilot plant operating at their demonstration site at Somersby, on the Central Coast of NSW:
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: climate change :: carbon sequestration :: biomass :: pyrolysis :: bio-oil :: agrichar :: biochar :: soils :: energy crops :: carbon-negative ::
“Once the high carbon char product, agrichar, is added as an amendment to agricultural soils, some of the most remarkable and promising benefits of this technology become apparent,” said Adriana Downie, Technical Manager for BEST Energies Australia. Experiments conducted by the NSW Department of Primary Industries have demonstrated that the char product can improve several soil health indicators as well as increase crop yields and productivity.
NSW DPI research scientist, Dr Lukas Van Zwieten, has found that when applied at 10 tonnes per hectare, the biomass of wheat was tripled and of soybeans was more than doubled. Van Zwieten said the char product also decreases emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide from soils and increases the efficiency of nitrogen fertilizers.
NSW Primary Industries Minister, Ian Macdonald said this new process offers hope for using soils as a carbon “sink”.
Tim Flannery, Australian of the Year, renowned scientist, environmentalist, and author of The Weather Makers, is a major advocate of char and pyrolysis. In The Bulletin magazine, Flannery recently listed “fostering pyrolysis-based technologies” fourth among his five steps for saving the planet.
The UN Association award winners for World Environment Day were announced at a ceremony in Melbourne, Australia on Friday June 1.
Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Best Energies is focused on leading the development of clean energy solutions all based on renewable bio-resources. Best has formed a family of companies that provide integrated bioenergy solutions around the world where biomass is available and energy is needed.
In a similar development, biomass-to-liquids company Dynamotive earlier announced it is taking part in a comparable project. In contrast to Best Energies, Dynamotive develops fast-pyrolysis conversion technologies, which use higher temperatures. But like its counter-part, slow pyrolysis, an agrichar is obtained in this process too, making it possible to produce carbon negative biofuels by sequestring that biochar into soils (earlier post).
Large potential
A major advantage of the 'terra preta' technique is that it is quite low-tech. In contrast to other carbon sequestration technologies - such as 'carbon capture and storage' (CCS) from coal plants - the technique can be implemented on a vast scale in the developing world. Especially in the tropics and the subtropics, where soils are often nutrient-deficient, the application of biochar could yield multiple benefits.
Farmers in the South would thus become producers of carbon negative biofuels, while at the same time using their soils as carbon sinks that stimulate crop growth.
In contrast to CCS, which requires large and expensive infrastructures and are coupled to large, centralised power stations, biomass pyrolysis plants can be taken up in a decentralised biofuel production strategy and coupled to local soil improvement plans.
Image: NSW DPI environmental scientist Steve Kimber shows one of the chambers used to monitor greenhouse gases emitted from the Wollongbar trial plot. Credit: NSW DPI.
More information:
Pollution Online: BEST Energies Wins UN World Environment Day Award - June 11, 2007.
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