Paper details

Title:

EU-China Biogas Cooperation Issues to Leverage China's Biogas Energy Potential for Large Scale Application

Author(s):

Raninger, B., Dong, R., Zhou, H., Nelles, M., Brauner, C., Qian, M.

Document(s):

Abstract:

China is at current facing the most rapid period of urbanization in history, but energy demand coverage, the high petroleum import ratio, environmental protection and global climate change issues have to be tackled in order to ensure a sustainable and globally acceptable socioeconomic development. The large scale application of Biogas from biomass as source of energy and organic petrochemical compounds could impact positively on the above¬mentioned problems and Chinas petrochemical research is anticipating an integrated use of fossil and renewable biomass resources. The biogas potential for middle, large and ‘newly defined‘ super large biogas plants from (i) the agricultural sector (crop residues, animal manure, agro industrial waste) and (ii) urban wastes (bioorganic household waste, municipal sewage sludge) are estimated to be at current theoretical annually 290 billion m3, which could account for 6.9% of the total energy demand. Decentralized wastewater treatment systems, small household digesters and landfill gas are not included. This potential could increase to 440 billion m3 by 2030 by considering the general growth factors and by including some energy crops from marginal unused land as additional feedstock. Biogas plants with an installed capacity of 71 GW could be installed and contribute to the renewable energy targets of China more as so far planned. The current total annual reduction potential of CO2 equivalents is 4.75 billion tons. By 2030 even 7 billion tons of CO2 equivalents could be saved, not included carbon sequestration achieved through the use of biogas effluent as organic fertilizer. The Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) in China has summarized the needs to leverage better the biomass resources and to develop the sector of agricultural large scale biogas plants through international cooperation as follows: 1. The investment scale of biogas plants needs to be enlarged by 2.5 times in average 2. The types of feedstock materials need to be expanded: besides of manure and straw, alternative feedstock materials from the agro¬industry, municipal sources and, up to a certain extent, energy crops, should be included. 3. Biogas plant efficiency and gas yields need to be improved to international performance practice 4. Public subsidies must be performance and end product related und be extended to biogas purification, thermal energy recovery, fertilizer use, etc. the current power generation grid feed¬in price is low, so the policy incentive effect is insufficient 5. A quality monitoring and operation evaluation mechanism for biogas plants has to be established and publicly funded biogas projects, not operated or underperforming, shall receive penalties. The forecast of the biogas production shows that the resources are far from being fully exploited, that the actual policy targets to develop sustainable biogas energy could be easily reached and should be much more ambitious. European biogas policy, business concepts and advanced technology shall be supportive to achieve Chinas targets.

Keywords:

biogas, policy, agriculture biogas plant, performance, international, large utility

Topic:

Biomass Policies, Markets and Sustainability

Subtopic:

International cooperation

Event:

20th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition

Session:

5BO.12.1

Pages:

2034 - 2039

ISBN:

978-88-89407-54-7

Paper DOI:

10.5071/20thEUBCE2012-5BO.12.1

Price:

FREE