China boosts forest based bioenergy projects: 870,000ha of oil trees in Hebei's uninhabited mountain areas
Persistent high oil prices and rapidly growing dependence on imported oil prompt China to further invest in biofuels that yield environmental benefits besides fuel. Forestry administrators told state media they will be planting nearly 7,000 hectares of oilseed bearing trees in the northern province of Hebei this year, part of a much larger national campaign to fuel the fast growing economy in a greener way. The 7000ha demonstration project will grow Chinese pistachio trees. They kickstart Hebei's program aimed at planting a total of 870,000ha of multi-purpose bioenergy trees in uninhabited mountainous areas over the coming decades.
In no more than five years, the Pistacia chinensis Bunge (see entry at the Plants for the Future database, and illustration, click to enlarge), whose seeds have an oil content of up to 40 percent, will yield five tons of fruit and contribute about two tons of high-quality biodiesel, according to the provincial forestry administration. The tree tolerates poor, dry soils and has relatively low water needs.
Hebei is among seven regions designated by the State Forestry Administration (SFA) in 2006 to develop biofuel demonstration forests.
Hebei, Anhui, Hunan, Sichuan, Yunnan and Shanxi provinces and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region will grow a total of 400,000 hectares of demonstration forest. All plants will be oil-bearing shrubs and trees, many of who will contribute to fighting erosion and desertification. The trees include Pistacia chinensis, Jatropha curcas, Cornus wilsoniana and Xanthoceras sorbifolia. All of these are perennial shrubs and trees that can be established relatively easily. The seeds will be used for oil, and the wood they yield might serve as a biomass feedstock for bio-electricity or second-generation fuel production after the useful life of the plant.
Cornus wilsoniana's fruit is a source of oil (up to 30% oil content), the leaves are used for livestock feed, and the dense wood has a high energy value.
Xanthoceras sorbifolia (yellow horn) is a hardy, self fertile, nut producing shrub native to Northern China. Belonging to the Sapindaceae, its oil-rich nuts and pods resemble those of chesnuts.
But the provincial government of Hebei that borders Beijing, has made a much bolder decision still. It will plant an impressive 870,000 hectares of saplings of various kinds of biodiesel trees in its vast mountain areas, where few other commercial crops grow well. Raising biofuel forests in mountain areas will save farmland, make full use of the uninhabited mountains, and increase local people's family income if they are employed to take care of the trees, the SFA says. By 2050 harvests should yield as much as 5.5 million tons of seeds for extraction and refining into biofuels.
China, which has realized consecutive years of GDP growth of about 10 percent, is promoting the development of biofuels with financial support as it sees them as environmentally-friendly sources to ease the growing thirst for energy.
The country has been raising oil-bearing trees on some 4 million ha of land in different regions so far with an expected fruit output of 4 million tons. More could be planted on 57 million hectares of what is now called 'underdeveloped wilderness', SFA chief, Jia Zhibang, said:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: cellulose :: trees :: desertification :: erosion :: energy security :: Hebei :: China ::
On part of these lands, the central government plans to cultivate a total of 13 million ha of high-grade bioenergy forests by 2020. This will yield 6 million tons of diesel that would be enough to fuel power plants with a combined capacity of 11 GW each year, according to a forestation plan compiled by the SFA.
Chinese officials said the country would increase biodiesel output for transport to 200,000 tons by 2010 and 2 million tons by 2020.
The People's Republic has been investing heavily in afforestation campaigns in an effort to fight desertification. This program has met with considerable success and is now being rethought within the context of bioenergy. So far, several projects in Northern-Western China and in Inner Mongolia have shown that trees for energy can help in the fight against erosion and desertification, besides producing renewable, low carbon fuels, and jobs to local people.
Scientists just recently wrote that carefully planned bioenergy projects can indeed yield many environmental benefits ranging from phytoremediation to reforestation, from the eradication of invasive species to restoring biodiversity, from conserving ecosystems under threat from industrial pollution to restoring soil health (previous post). China's energy tree projects could become large scale examples of such beneficial energy systems.
Big plans with renewables
Almost 70 percent of China's energy use came from coal in 2006, with other forms of energy each accounting for a tiny proportion, official statistics show. Ma Kai, the minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), announced last month that China would lift the proportion of renewable energy consumption to about 10 percent by 2010, and to 20 percent by 2020.
The country would focus on development of hydropower, biomass energy, wind power and solar power in future, according to a medium- and long-term plan for renewable energy published by the commission in September (illustration). This ambitious program would attract investments of up to $265 billion (previous post).
The Ministry of Finance (MOF) has worked out a complete set of financial policies to promote the production of non-food sources for biofuels, which are clean and have a limited negative impact on the environment.
Flexible subsidies will be offered to biofuel producers who lose money on crops when crude oil prices are low. The government would encourage enterprises to reserve funds to offset such risks, according to Zeng Xiao'an, deputy director of the MOF's Department of Economic Development.
The ministry would also subsidize demonstration projects producing ethanol from cellulose, sweet sorghum and cassava or making biodiesel from forest products. Projects that are up to industrial standards would receive rewards of up to 40 percent of the total investment.
References:
Xinhua: China resorts to biodiesel projects to solve energy shortage - January 16, 2008.
Biopact: China to boost forest-based bioenergy, helps win battle against desertification - July 17, 2007
Biopact: Greening the desert with biofuels: Inner Mongolia peasants show it's possible - August 14, 2007
Biopact: Scientists: careful planning unlocks many environmental benefits of biomass besides green energy - January 16, 2008
Biopact: China unveils $265 billion renewable energy plan, aims for 15% renewables by 2020 - September 06, 2007
Article continues
In no more than five years, the Pistacia chinensis Bunge (see entry at the Plants for the Future database, and illustration, click to enlarge), whose seeds have an oil content of up to 40 percent, will yield five tons of fruit and contribute about two tons of high-quality biodiesel, according to the provincial forestry administration. The tree tolerates poor, dry soils and has relatively low water needs.
Hebei is among seven regions designated by the State Forestry Administration (SFA) in 2006 to develop biofuel demonstration forests.
Hebei, Anhui, Hunan, Sichuan, Yunnan and Shanxi provinces and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region will grow a total of 400,000 hectares of demonstration forest. All plants will be oil-bearing shrubs and trees, many of who will contribute to fighting erosion and desertification. The trees include Pistacia chinensis, Jatropha curcas, Cornus wilsoniana and Xanthoceras sorbifolia. All of these are perennial shrubs and trees that can be established relatively easily. The seeds will be used for oil, and the wood they yield might serve as a biomass feedstock for bio-electricity or second-generation fuel production after the useful life of the plant.
Cornus wilsoniana's fruit is a source of oil (up to 30% oil content), the leaves are used for livestock feed, and the dense wood has a high energy value.
Xanthoceras sorbifolia (yellow horn) is a hardy, self fertile, nut producing shrub native to Northern China. Belonging to the Sapindaceae, its oil-rich nuts and pods resemble those of chesnuts.
But the provincial government of Hebei that borders Beijing, has made a much bolder decision still. It will plant an impressive 870,000 hectares of saplings of various kinds of biodiesel trees in its vast mountain areas, where few other commercial crops grow well. Raising biofuel forests in mountain areas will save farmland, make full use of the uninhabited mountains, and increase local people's family income if they are employed to take care of the trees, the SFA says. By 2050 harvests should yield as much as 5.5 million tons of seeds for extraction and refining into biofuels.
China, which has realized consecutive years of GDP growth of about 10 percent, is promoting the development of biofuels with financial support as it sees them as environmentally-friendly sources to ease the growing thirst for energy.
The country has been raising oil-bearing trees on some 4 million ha of land in different regions so far with an expected fruit output of 4 million tons. More could be planted on 57 million hectares of what is now called 'underdeveloped wilderness', SFA chief, Jia Zhibang, said:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: cellulose :: trees :: desertification :: erosion :: energy security :: Hebei :: China ::
On part of these lands, the central government plans to cultivate a total of 13 million ha of high-grade bioenergy forests by 2020. This will yield 6 million tons of diesel that would be enough to fuel power plants with a combined capacity of 11 GW each year, according to a forestation plan compiled by the SFA.
Chinese officials said the country would increase biodiesel output for transport to 200,000 tons by 2010 and 2 million tons by 2020.
The People's Republic has been investing heavily in afforestation campaigns in an effort to fight desertification. This program has met with considerable success and is now being rethought within the context of bioenergy. So far, several projects in Northern-Western China and in Inner Mongolia have shown that trees for energy can help in the fight against erosion and desertification, besides producing renewable, low carbon fuels, and jobs to local people.
Scientists just recently wrote that carefully planned bioenergy projects can indeed yield many environmental benefits ranging from phytoremediation to reforestation, from the eradication of invasive species to restoring biodiversity, from conserving ecosystems under threat from industrial pollution to restoring soil health (previous post). China's energy tree projects could become large scale examples of such beneficial energy systems.
Big plans with renewables
The country would focus on development of hydropower, biomass energy, wind power and solar power in future, according to a medium- and long-term plan for renewable energy published by the commission in September (illustration). This ambitious program would attract investments of up to $265 billion (previous post).
The Ministry of Finance (MOF) has worked out a complete set of financial policies to promote the production of non-food sources for biofuels, which are clean and have a limited negative impact on the environment.
Flexible subsidies will be offered to biofuel producers who lose money on crops when crude oil prices are low. The government would encourage enterprises to reserve funds to offset such risks, according to Zeng Xiao'an, deputy director of the MOF's Department of Economic Development.
The ministry would also subsidize demonstration projects producing ethanol from cellulose, sweet sorghum and cassava or making biodiesel from forest products. Projects that are up to industrial standards would receive rewards of up to 40 percent of the total investment.
References:
Xinhua: China resorts to biodiesel projects to solve energy shortage - January 16, 2008.
Biopact: China to boost forest-based bioenergy, helps win battle against desertification - July 17, 2007
Biopact: Greening the desert with biofuels: Inner Mongolia peasants show it's possible - August 14, 2007
Biopact: Scientists: careful planning unlocks many environmental benefits of biomass besides green energy - January 16, 2008
Biopact: China unveils $265 billion renewable energy plan, aims for 15% renewables by 2020 - September 06, 2007
Article continues
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Siemens and E.ON to cooperate on post-combustion carbon capture - towards negative emissions from bioenergy
Several options exist, all with their advantages and drawbacks: capturing the CO2 before the fuel is combusted, which could be applied to biohydrogen and biogas; capturing the carbon dioxide gas during a modified combustion process (oxyfuel); or capturing it after the combustion of the fuel, from the power plant's flue gases. Organisations around the world are developing such technologies, mainly for applications in coal and gas-fired power plants. But the basics remain the same for biomass (co-firing) power plants. For this reason, we actively track developments in CCS - ironically, the coal sector may be developing the very technologies needed to design the most radically green energy system imaginable.
What is more, when CCS is applied to biomass, the biggest argument leveled by environmentalists against the technology - the potential for leakage of CO2 - becomes invalid, because the stored CO2 is biogenic in nature and does not come from fossil fuels.
Scientists from the Abrupt Climate Change Strategy Group have found that if we apply BECS systems on a global scale, we can cool the planet and go back to pre-industrial CO2 levels by mid-century (see references below). Moreover, the IEA has shown that there is enough potential to phase out coal and to replace it with sustainably grown biomass. In short, all those who take climate change serious, could have an interest in supporting negative emissions bioenergy.
German giants Siemens and E.ON Energie are the latest to cooperate on the development of an economic and efficient method for carbon capture. They announced that their starting point is a solvent with special characteristics which provide the basis for a new process to capture CO2 from the flue gases of power plants (post-combustion capture - can be applied to biomass flue gas). A pilot installation on an E.ON power plant site in Germany will be operational by 2010. Further developments will follow up until 2014. The mid-term target is to develop this new CO2 capture process ready for large-scale, commercial deployment by 2020. The project is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) within the framework of the COORETEC initiative.
The new process and the energetically optimum integration into conventional power plants will be verified in 2010 in a small pilot plant under real operating conditions, with particular considerations of the significance for a full-scale plant. The new process will not only be feasible for new power plants, but it will also be appropriate for retrofitting existing plants, which opens up significant application potentials worldwide.
The latter point is important in order to imagine a scenario for the emergence of BECS systems. Coal-fired power plants will first start to co-fire biomass, which is already being done routinely and on a large scale throughout Europe. Then they will transit to co-firing ever more biomass - Britain's Slough Heat & Power CHP plant is already using 87% biomass in a plant that started out with coal alone, proving it can be done -, a prospect that becomes ever more likely because coal prices are increasing rapidly and biomass supply chains are becoming more efficient. Finally the power plants are retrofitted with carbon capture technologies, like the ones being developed by Siemens and E.ON. This would be a feasible, safe, reasonable but nonetheless radical scenario that would offer the single most important contribution to reducing global carbon emissions:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: carbon capture and storage :: bio-energy with carbon storage :: carbon-negative :: negative emissions :: climate change ::
Bernhard Fischer, Chief Technology Officer, member of the executive board of E.ON Energie, says E. ON brings into this partnership its experience from the planning and operation of numerous fossil-fueled power plants and the site for the planned pilot plant, whereas Siemens in turn provides extensive experience and know-how in the engineering and project execution for complete power plants. Siemens also brings in chemical process development competencies and engineering skills of the former Hoechst AG. Those look like interesting preconditions for successful development of an efficient CO2 capture process, as well as for its optimum integration in a power plant process.
Michael Suess, CEO of the Siemens Fossil Power Generation Division, says that even in the foreseeable future, it will not be possible to meet the rapidly growing demand for electricity worldwide without fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas [we disagree: projections by the IEA and by the Abrupt Climate Change Strategy Group, which studies BECS systems, show sustainably produced and internationally traded biomass can replace all coal consumption, and be used in negative emissions power plants.]
Climate experts agree, continues Suess: CO2 emissions have to be reduced quickly and significantly to limit the increase in temperature. For that a broad variety of technologies has to be implemented. This includes technologies to further increase the efficiency of power plants and processes to capture and store carbon dioxide (CCS), added Suess. Just under a quarter of global CO2 emissions are attributable to power generation. It is anticipated that viable large-scale CCS technologies will capture approximately 90% of the CO2. Within the EU, mandatory carbon dioxide capture and storage is being debated for beyond 2020. For this reason new solutions have to be developed and tested today.
Joerg Kruhl, head of the new technologies division at E.ON Energie, says that besides the mid-term development of beneficial technologies, the fast transfer of promising post-combustion capture processes to real power plant operation is what counts in particular for E.ON today. This is the necessary next step on the way toward large-scale deployment of CCS in the energy sector.
References:
E.ON: Siemens and E.ON to cooperate on the development of climate-friendly power plant technology - January 17, 2007.
Biopact: Towards carbon-negative biofuels: US DOE awards $66.7 million for large-scale CO2 capture and storage from ethanol plant - December 19, 2007
Biopact: EU launches DECARBit project to research advanced pre-combustion CO2 capture from power plants - November 21, 2007
Scientific literature on negative emissions from biomass:
H. Audus and P. Freund, "Climate Change Mitigation by Biomass Gasificiation Combined with CO2 Capture and Storage", IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme.
James S. Rhodesa and David W. Keithb, "Engineering economic analysis of biomass IGCC with carbon capture and storage", Biomass and Bioenergy, Volume 29, Issue 6, December 2005, Pages 440-450.
Noim Uddin and Leonardo Barreto, "Biomass-fired cogeneration systems with CO2 capture and storage", Renewable Energy, Volume 32, Issue 6, May 2007, Pages 1006-1019, doi:10.1016/j.renene.2006.04.009
Christian Azar, Kristian Lindgren, Eric Larson and Kenneth Möllersten, "Carbon Capture and Storage From Fossil Fuels and Biomass – Costs and Potential Role in Stabilizing the Atmosphere", Climatic Change, Volume 74, Numbers 1-3 / January, 2006, DOI 10.1007/s10584-005-3484-7
Further reading on negative emissions bioenergy and biofuels:
Peter Read and Jonathan Lermit, "Bio-Energy with Carbon Storage (BECS): a Sequential Decision Approach to the threat of Abrupt Climate Change", Energy, Volume 30, Issue 14, November 2005, Pages 2654-2671.
Stefan Grönkvist, Kenneth Möllersten, Kim Pingoud, "Equal Opportunity for Biomass in Greenhouse Gas Accounting of CO2 Capture and Storage: A Step Towards More Cost-Effective Climate Change Mitigation Regimes", Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Volume 11, Numbers 5-6 / September, 2006, DOI 10.1007/s11027-006-9034-9
Further reading on potential applications:
Biopact: Pre-combustion CO2 capture from biogas - the way forward? - March 31, 2007
Biopact: "A closer look at the revolutionary coal+biomass-to-liquids with carbon storage project" - September 13, 2007
Biopact: New plastic-based, nano-engineered CO2 capturing membrane developed - September 19, 2007
Biopact: Plastic membrane to bring down cost of carbon capture - August 15, 2007
Biopact: Pre-combustion CO2 capture from biogas - the way forward? - March 31, 2007
Article continues
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