Biomass can promote the development of energy transformation under the new situation



One-industry situation

Biomass energy is an important way to replace fossil energy. Faced with the severe situation of global climate change, biomass energy plays an increasingly prominent role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving temperature control goals. The green, low-carbon and environmental protection characteristics of biomass energy have been widely recognized, and it is an important choice for countries such as Europe and the United States to implement carbon neutral strategies. Research by the International Energy Agency shows that in modern biomass energy utilization, biomass heating accounts for about 70% of renewable energy heating. The availability of global biomass resources is about 100 to 300 exajoules (equivalent to 3.4 billion to 10.2 billion tons of standard coal). By 2050, the world could provide about 160 exajoules (5.46 billion tons of standard coal) of biomass energy. It can be seen that the future development potential of biomass resources is huge, and biomass energy will play an important role in the low-carbon green transformation of energy. Under the new situation, China attaches great importance to the development of biomass energy industry. The strategic plan of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality issued by China has repeatedly emphasized the strengthening of biomass energy development. In the "Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and The State Council on Fully, Accurately and Comprehensively Implementing the New Development Concept to do a good job of carbon peak carbon neutral work" and the "Notice of The State Council on Issuing an action Plan for Carbon Peak before 2030", it is proposed to develop biomass energy according to local conditions, and clarify the important role of biomass energy under the "dual carbon" goal. Through the energy development of agricultural and forestry waste, rural employment can be solved, farmers' income can be increased, rural living environment can be improved, agricultural waste large-scale, mechanized collection, processing, storage and transportation system can be developed, industrialization cultivation base can be formed around agricultural and rural production services, and a new model of rural green circular economy and low-carbon energy transformation and development can be built. At the same time, biomass energy can provide an effective carbon reduction path for industrial production areas where decarbonization is difficult, and can also provide flexible peaking for a new power system and provide important support for the large-scale development of renewable energy. The biomass energy industry entered a new stage of development in the "14th Five-Year Plan". Since 2021, biomass power generation projects have begun bidding, marking that biomass power generation has fully participated in market competition. The non-electric application of biomass energy is further promoted, and biomass heating, biological natural gas and biological liquid fuels will achieve leap-forward development in the process of energy transformation. Biomass energy will rely on the unique advantages of low carbon environmental protection, stable and reliable, recycling, rich categories and no dead corner replacement in the field of fossil energy such as oil, electricity, gas and heat, and realize the recycling of organic waste resources by green and low-carbon transformation, while achieving clean replacement in the field of energy transformation difficult to replace by electrification. We will vigorously promote rural revitalization, rural energy transformation, and coordinated green development in cities and towns.

Current situation and trend of secondary industry

By the end of 2021, China's biomass energy development and utilization total of about 75 million tons of standard coal, of which, biomass power generation (including cogeneration) total installed capacity reached 37.98 million kilowatts, generating power of 163.7 billion KWH, providing green electricity equivalent to 50 million tons of standard coal, biomass energy non-electric utilization of about 25 million tons of standard coal. Mainly used in industrial and residential heating, transportation fuel, rural and urban gas fields. Under the new situation, biomass energy has shown broad application prospects in various fields. In the field of large-scale biomass power, steadily promote the development of existing scale application potential, will achieve the dual effect of agricultural and forestry waste utilization efficiency and conversion efficiency, significantly increase green power, achieve high-quality development of biomass power generation industry, while providing stable renewable energy power for large-scale development of wind power and photovoltaic power generation. In the newly developed non-electric fields, biomass energy will show a full range of clean alternative advantages, biomass energy in rural areas to replace fossil energy, in industrial production and transportation to use existing infrastructure to replace fossil energy, to achieve a minimum cost of input to reduce carbon emission. Fully tap the production potential of existing biomass power generation projects. At the current technical level, the utilization hours of biomass power generation and the stability of power generation equipment are comparable to the parameters of traditional coal-fired power sets, and when the fuel supply is sufficient, the existing installed capacity of biomass power generation has more than 300 billion KWH of stable green power production capacity. At present, the scale development speed of the biomass power generation industry has far exceeded expectations, under the trend of de-subsidization and market competition, maximize the production capacity of biomass power generation stock projects, which is conducive to consolidating the competitiveness of the industry, so that the biomass power generation industry has entered the benign development track. We will actively carry out demonstrations of coupled biomass and coal power generation. Before the large-scale replacement of coal power by renewable energy power, biomass and coal coupling power generation is an effective solution to reduce coal and carbon in the coal power industry, which can reduce coal use on the basis of maintaining existing power generation. According to the distribution of biomass resources, further reasonable expansion of biomass coal coupled power generation project transformation is an important way to achieve low-carbon clean energy transformation of China's coal-fired power plants. Strive to achieve 1 million kilowatts of biomass coupled power generation demonstration during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period. Comprehensively promote clean substitution of biomass energy in non-electric fields. Biomass fuel can effectively replace fossil fuels in the industrial production process, such as coke, pulverized coal, natural gas, heavy oil, etc., to reduce carbon emissions or even achieve negative carbon emissions. It is expected that by the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan", the non-electricity utilization of biomass energy is expected to double, totaling more than 50 million tons of standard coal. At that time, the biomass boiler heating utilization scale will reach 600 pjiao, and the annual utilization of biomass solid fuel will be about 20 million tons of standard coal, contributing to the clean alternative of bulk coal burning and industrial heating in rural areas. The field of bio-gas will continue to focus on promoting the development of bio-gas, and the total utilization of bio-gas will reach 21 billion cubic meters, equivalent to about 14 million tons of standard coal, forming a wide coverage of clean living energy in rural areas. The total biomass liquid fuel is equivalent to about 22 million tons of standard coal, of which the utilization of biofuel ethanol is about 11.6 million tons, the utilization of biodiesel is about 7 million tons, and the utilization of bio-jet coal is about 800,000 tons. It is expected that by 2025, biomass energy utilization will reach 120 million tons of standard coal, biomass energy will be an important choice to achieve the "double carbon" goal, in the new situation of green and low-carbon energy transformation, The scale of biomass energy development will depend more on the cultivation and development ability of biomass raw materials, the management level of collection and storage logistics, the level of efficient conversion technology of biomass energy, and the stable policy market environment.

Three challenges

It has not yet established the priority status of low-carbon and clean development of the biomass energy industry. In the process of promoting renewable energy, biomass energy has not manifested its due importance, lack of strong legal support, and lack of widespread recognition of the cleanliness of biomass, which has seriously limited the development of biomass energy industry. In some areas, biomass energy is still restricted by multiple factors in the policy market environment, and its value in ecological civilization, circular economy, environmental protection, poverty alleviation, and benefiting the people and farmers has not been fully reflected, its social and environmental benefits are not fully recognized by the whole society, and its advantages of diversified application and carbon neutrality have not yet emerged. The level of rural economic development is difficult to support the development and utilization of biomass resources. Biomass energy is closely related to rural development, dispersed resources, long industrial chain, and difficult to scale, which constitute a natural barrier restricting the development of biomass energy industry. The development and utilization of biomass resources in rural areas with relatively backward economic level means that the capital investment is far beyond the local economic expenditure capacity. Although the central government and various competent departments have invested a lot of funds in solving the problems of agricultural non-point source pollution control, agricultural waste treatment, harmless treatment of livestock and poultry manure, and resource utilization of agricultural residues, further discussion is needed in terms of resource scientific planning, concentrating policy advantages, and selecting the best route for disposing of agricultural and forestry end wastes. The promotion of biomass energy in local villages and towns is still a challenge to promote rural energy revolution. Biomass green power capacity has not been fully released. It is difficult to acquire raw materials for biomass power generation projects and some projects are forced to stop production, resulting in the overall low number of annual power generation utilization hours, and the phenomenon of low-load operation is widespread. According to statistics in 2021, the average annual utilization hours of biomass power generation are 4804 hours, of which the average annual utilization hours of agricultural and forestry biomass power generation projects are only 3800 hours. Under the premise of sufficient supply of raw materials, the annual utilization hours of biomass power generation can be maintained at least more than 7,000 hours, and the annual power generation can exceed 260 billion KWH under the existing installed capacity unchanged. Biomass power generation is an important source of stable renewable energy power. To ensure the supply of raw materials and form a policy environment for stable operation, biomass power will provide strong peaking support for wind power and photovoltaic power generation, and better promote the large-scale development of wind power and photovoltaic power generation. The environmental monitoring index of biomass energy project deviates from the real emission reduction. The regulatory requirements for pollutant emissions in biomass energy-related fields are easy to cause the misunderstanding of the whole society that biomass energy is a "high-pollution" industry. In many places, the atmospheric pollution emission standards of biomass energy projects are implemented with reference to the atmospheric pollution emission requirements of coal-fired power generation, especially the emission index requirements of nitrogen oxides, forcing biomass energy enterprises to increase nitrogen oxide reduction facilities, resulting in a further increase in the investment and operating costs of biomass energy projects lacking economic competitiveness, and to a certain extent, inhibiting the biomass carbon emission reduction benefits. Under the background of "dual carbon", taking into account the characteristics of biomass raw materials and the balance of carbon emission reduction benefits is the challenge faced by biomass energy environmental protection. It is difficult to formulate incentive policies and industry management for biomass energy industry. The complex diversity of the biomass energy industry chain limits the formulation of incentive policies. Factors such as raw materials of different technology types, conversion technology costs, product measurement methods increase the difficulty of researching and formulating incentive policies. Biomass power generation, heating, gas, liquid fuel production and transformation technology and economic calculation methods are different, incentive policies need to make a systematic analysis and evaluation of raw material differences in different fields, industrial scale, funding sources, market mechanisms, tax incentives, etc. Therefore, each field of biomass energy needs to set up a special incentive policy research. The existing incentive policy system has not fully covered the whole field of biomass energy. The biomass energy industry involves the cross-management of competent departments in many fields, which also brings inconvenience to policy formulation and implementation supervision, and cross-departmental communication and coordination mechanisms and collaborative cooperation need to be strengthened.

Four policy Recommendations

Improve relevant laws and regulations. In the proposed revision of the Renewable Energy Law, the important role of biomass energy in the construction of ecological civilization is emphasized, and the development status of biomass energy in the clean energy system is enhanced. Through legislation, we will further strengthen the popularization of science and technology on biomass energy in environmental protection, agriculture, agriculture, poverty alleviation, circular economy development and other aspects, and enhance the awareness of priority development of biomass energy. Biomass energy is the rigid demand for the energy utilization of urban and rural organic waste, and is an effective means to break the urban-rural dualization development gap. Scientific and reasonable disposal of urban and rural domestic waste and organic waste is conducive to improving the living environment of urban and rural residents and effectively promoting the development of ecological circular economy. We will strengthen the construction of a management service system for the biomass energy industry. Improve the construction of biomass energy standard system, including biomass fuel standards, biomass boiler technical standards, biomass boiler emission standards and boiler emission testing standards, biomass coupled power generation blending standards, biomass coupled power generation project construction review specifications, biogas and large-scale biogas project construction review specifications. Establish and improve relevant testing and inspection management institutions, build a quality standard system for the whole biomass energy industry chain, and form a systematic and standardized management service system to provide guarantee and basis for the integration of various types of biomass energy into the traditional energy application system. Establish a multi-departmental cooperation system. The healthy and sustainable development of the biomass energy industry depends on the coordinated management of cross-departments and multi-fields, especially the combing and integration of upstream raw materials and the containment and breakthrough of downstream markets. Establish an industrial collaborative management system, clarify the responsibilities of the leading competent units and relevant departments, work together with finance, development and reform, agriculture, environmental protection, energy, housing, taxation, quality inspection and other departments, strengthen communication between relevant departments of the industry, eliminate misunderstandings, jointly study and formulate industrial development goals, plans, policies, standards, etc., to form policy synergy and promote industrial development. Formulate special incentive policies for the biomass energy industry. Biomass energy industry system is complex, the end products are rich, involving electricity, heat, gas, transportation and other application fields, different technological paths under the economic costs, social and environmental benefits are different, should be treated differently in the research and formulation of incentive policies. Taking biomass power generation policy as an example, agricultural and forestry biomass power generation and waste power generation, biogas power generation, its raw material cost, conversion technology, energy consumption level and power generation cost are different, each type of biomass power generation is a relatively independent technical field, and the price policy should fully consider the characteristics of the industry for targeted design. Past development experience has proved that biomass energy is different from wind power, photovoltaic and other renewable energy based on equipment manufacturing, fully considering biomass energy is a comprehensive clean energy based on ecological civilization and circular economy development, and studying and developing incentive policies suitable for the characteristics of the biomass energy industry is of great importance to ensure the healthy and sustainable development of the industry. Before the externalization of the environmental benefits of biomass energy, the price in the energy market cannot fully reflect the social and environmental benefits of biomass energy, and the cost of biomass energy does not have room for significant decline. It is necessary to create a fair energy market environment, provide policy support suitable for the characteristics of the biomass energy industry, and guide the healthy and sustainable development of the industry.