EU-CHINA BIOGAS COOPERATION ISSUES TO LEVERAGE CHINA’S BIOGAS ENERGY POTENTIAL FOR LARGE SCALE APPLICATION

摘要

China is at current facing the most rapid period of urbanization in history, but energy demandcoverage, the high petroleum import ratio, environmental protection and global climate change issues have to betackled in order to ensure a sustainable and globally acceptable socioeconomic development. The large scaleapplication of Biogas from biomass as source of energy and organic petrochemical compounds could impactpositively on the above-mentioned problems and Chinas petrochemical research is anticipating an integrated use offossil and renewable biomass resources. The biogas potential for middle, large and ‘newly defined‘ super large biogasplants 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 billionm3, which could account for 6.9% of the total energy demand. Decentralized wastewater treatment systems, smallhousehold digesters and landfill gas are not included. This potential could increase to 440 billion m3 by 2030 byconsidering the general growth factors and by including some energy crops from marginal unused land as additionalfeedstock. Biogas plants with an installed capacity of 71 GW could be installed and contribute to the renewableenergy targets of China more as so far planned. The current total annual reduction potential of CO_2 equivalents is4.75 billion tons. By 2030 even 7 billion tons of CO_2 equivalents could be saved, not included carbon sequestrationachieved through the use of biogas effluent as organic fertilizer. The Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) in China hassummarized the needs to leverage better the biomass resources and to develop the sector of agricultural large scalebiogas plants through international cooperation as follows: 1. The investment scale of biogas plants needs to beenlarged by 2.5 times in average 2. The types of feedstock materials need to be expanded: besides of manure andstraw, alternative feedstock materials from the agro-industry, municipal sources and, up to a certain extent, energycrops, should be included. 3. Biogas plant efficiency and gas yields need to be improved to international performancepractice 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 policyincentive effect is insufficient 5. A quality monitoring and operation evaluation mechanism for biogas plants has tobe established and publicly funded biogas projects, not operated or underperforming, shall receive penalties. Theforecast of the biogas production shows that the resources are far from being fully exploited, that the actual policytargets to develop sustainable biogas energy could be easily reached and should be much more ambitious. Europeanbiogas policy, business concepts and advanced technology shall be supportive to achieve Chinas targets.