China Needs Govt Support For Biodiesel - Academic
Date: 20-Apr-06
Country: CHINA
Author: Emma Graham-Harrison
Bioethanol has enjoyed official support for several years and is already blended into all gasoline sold in five provinces.
The mix, known as gasohol, is also available in some areas of another four provinces, said Du Wei, from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Beijing's Tsinghua university.
Subsidies of around 137 euros (US$169) per tonne helped bring the average price for bioethanol down to about 360 euros per tonne last year, well below gasoline costs in China, she told an industry conference in the southern city of Nanjing.
The fuel was originally favoured in part to help boost rural incomes in areas with a corn surplus, but biodiesel is made from other crops and has received little attention from Beijing.
"So far there are no specifications or incentive policy from the government, so that is one of the limiting factors for biodiesel," Du said.
"But the government is also paying more and more attention to this," she added.
Five major Chinese bioethanol manufacturers now have capacity to produce over 1.5 million tonnes a year, including one of the biggest plants in the world in northeastern Jilin province, which can churn out 600,000 tonnes annually.
Biodiesel output by contrast was under 100,000 tonnes last year and no blends are sold in any of China's service stations.
Feedstock is more problematic than for bioethanol because it is usually made from plants or their products -- such as peanuts, soybeans or sunflowers -- that would preferably be used to produce edible oils, Du said.
And despite government support and environmental benefits, even bioethanol production may ultimately be limited by the supply of raw materials, as China has a relatively low amount of arable land per person by world standards and needs much of it just to feed its population.
Years of Maoist emphasis on self-sufficiency have also left a legacy of reluctance to turn farming land over to uses other than food production.
Beijing hopes to get 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, and if it targets reaching a 10 percent blend of biofuels nationwide by the same date, demand could reach nearly 23 million tonnes, Du said.
As over half of this would be biodiesel, the country needs to start ramping up production capacity rapidly soon.
If China could develop a way to collect millions of tonnes of waste oil for reprocessing or use forestry plants, it would help to boost output of biodiesel.