Biomass energy: The rebirth of agricultural and municipal waste

2. Bio-natural gas from municipal waste

Under the trend of continuously strengthening the supervision of catering and household waste in cities across the country, the field of bio-natural gas from municipal waste has experienced rapid development in the past five years, and the total energy supply has increased from 110,000 tons of standard coal in 2015 to 880,000 tons of standard coal in 2020.

• Food and beverage waste: In 2018, as food and beverage waste is an important cause of the spread of African swine fever in China, the government began to ban the use of food and beverage waste into the aquaculture industry to provide raw material supply for bio-gas manufacturing.

• Household kitchen waste: In 2017, The State Council issued the first household waste classification policy to gradually achieve a 35% household waste reuse rate by 2020.

Under the favorable factors such as the standardization of urban waste management and the support of waste reuse policies, the bio-gas industry from urban waste will usher in rapid growth, and it is expected that by 2025, the energy supply will exceed 2.4 million tons of standard coal.

• By 2030, several cities plan to have 80 to 100 percent of their waste sorted, recycled and disposed of.

• Bio-natural gas production is an important path for municipal waste treatment, which can improve the capacity of municipal waste management and achieve synergy with waste management work.

• Biogas produced through anaerobic fermentation can significantly reduce air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides compared to power generation from direct combustion of waste.

3 Rural biogas

Under the trend of strong policy support and increasing concentration of aquaculture industry, the biogas output of large-scale rural biogas facilities has been greatly improved. The distribution of rural biogas facilities is relatively dispersed, and large-scale farms are constructed and operated independently through EPC contracts, so the construction of facilities is closely related to the biogas output and the development trend of large-scale farms.

In 2017, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the 13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Rural biogas, which provides 40% investment subsidies for the construction of large-scale rural biogas facilities.

• The concentration trend of the farming industry is obvious, and large farms are replacing family farming, providing a better foundation for the construction of large-scale biogas facilities.

4 Biodiesel

Thanks to the European Union's strong demand for biodiesel, the continuous improvement of domestic catering waste recycling supervision and policy support, China's biodiesel market has grown rapidly, from 400,000 tons in 2015 to 1.3 million tons in 2020, with an average annual growth rate of 26%.

In China, the biodiesel industry chain is mainly composed of waste oil recovery, fuel biodiesel production, export and other links:

• The use of waste oil to produce biodiesel for fuel is the main path of the industrial process in the field of biodiesel in China; At present, the total production capacity of biodiesel for fuel in China is about 1 million tons, concentrated in three private enterprises, with CR3 reaching 65%;

• The price of domestic biodiesel is significantly lower than the export price, resulting in the sale of biodiesel in China mainly for export, and a small amount of products are sold to domestic oil companies for blending;

There is no growth target for the proportion of biodiesel used in China, and the demand for biodiesel lags behind that of the EU and the US; However, with the gradual implementation of the goal of reaching the peak of carbon and carbon neutrality, China is likely to introduce a clear biodiesel growth target, and local demand will also usher in rapid growth.

In the case of strong export demand from the EU, the implementation of China's green economy policy and the improvement of raw material collection, the biodiesel industry will maintain continuous growth momentum in the next few years, and it is expected that by 2025, the total supply capacity will reach 3.8 million tons of standard coal. However, in the long run, limited by the total amount of catering waste, biodiesel production may encounter bottlenecks in growth.

5 Bioethanol

In consideration of food security, China is very cautious about the development of bioethanol, and mainly uses the production of bioethanol as a technical tool to rationally utilize the extended grain and the low edible value grain. The "Tenth Five-Year Plan" period is the embryonic stage of China's bioethanol industry, which mainly uses the overdue grain to produce bioethanol to avoid the overdue grain entering the normal grain trade channel. After 2007, bioethanol production ushered in steady development, with an average annual growth rate of about 5%, to achieve 3.2 million tons of bioethanol production by 2020.

The technology of using expired grain to produce bioethanol has matured, but in the operation process, bioethanol enterprises are highly regulated by the National Development and Reform Commission in project start-up, raw material procurement and product sales.