Spanish company Ferry Group is to invest €42/US$55.2 million in a project for the production of biomass fuel pellets in Bulgaria.
The 3-year project consists of establishing plantations of paulownia trees near the city of Tran. Paulownia is a fast-growing tree used for the commercial production of fuel pellets.
Chinese top official dismisses coal-to-liquids as irresponsible and inefficient
Quicknote climate change
China is massively investing in coal infrastructures to meet its insatiable demand for energy. Eighty per cent of the country's electricity already comes from coal, and there are plans for 544 new coal-fired power stations. This makes China the future nightmare of all governments who take dangerous climate change serious. In an even worse development, the rising giant has also been investing in coal-to-liquids (CTL) facilities, aimed at producing synthetic diesel to be used for transport. South-Africa's Sasol, a pioneer in coal-to-liquids technolgy, has partnered with Chinese companies on a CTL project, as has Shell.
Current CTL technologies are derivatives of the original Fischer-Tropsch process created by two German coal researchers in the 1920s. In the basic process, the producer gasifies the coal to create a synthetic gas, which then is treated to create a variety of liquid fuels and chemicals.
For the first time, a Chinese top official is now publicly dismissing these CTL investments as irresponsible and inefficient. Half of China's cars will use cleaner fuels instead, such as energy-efficient gas and biofuels by 2025, he said. Feng Fei, director of the industrial economics research department with the Development Research Center of China's State Council - the comprehensive policy research and consulting institution operating directly under the central government of the People's Republic of China - told an audience of energy experts at a seminar that "biofuels and hydrogen are the ultimate substitutes for fossil fuels" (more about China's ambitious biofuels program, here). According to Fei, oil made from coal, which is extremely resource intensive, must be dismissed: "The biggest problems of turning coal into oil are its low energy efficiency and high emission of carbon dioxide in the production process."
Three to five tons of high-quality coal is needed to produce a ton of diesel, bringing the whole energy consumption to two to three times that of gasoline-driven cars, while the burning of the fuel emits 50 to 100 percent more carbon dioxide than that of gasoline.
With a larger reserve of coal than oil, China can make oil from coal as part of the country's strategic reserves, but large scale of production runs against China's goals to improve the efficiency of energy use and to cut pollution, said Feng.
China has ascertained oil reserves of 24.8 billion tons and coal reserves of more than one trillion tons. China is estimated to need 450 million tons of petroleum a year by 2020, with more than half to be imported [entry ends here].
ethanol :: biodiesel :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: coal-to-liquids :: climate change :: China ::
China is massively investing in coal infrastructures to meet its insatiable demand for energy. Eighty per cent of the country's electricity already comes from coal, and there are plans for 544 new coal-fired power stations. This makes China the future nightmare of all governments who take dangerous climate change serious. In an even worse development, the rising giant has also been investing in coal-to-liquids (CTL) facilities, aimed at producing synthetic diesel to be used for transport. South-Africa's Sasol, a pioneer in coal-to-liquids technolgy, has partnered with Chinese companies on a CTL project, as has Shell. Current CTL technologies are derivatives of the original Fischer-Tropsch process created by two German coal researchers in the 1920s. In the basic process, the producer gasifies the coal to create a synthetic gas, which then is treated to create a variety of liquid fuels and chemicals.
For the first time, a Chinese top official is now publicly dismissing these CTL investments as irresponsible and inefficient. Half of China's cars will use cleaner fuels instead, such as energy-efficient gas and biofuels by 2025, he said. Feng Fei, director of the industrial economics research department with the Development Research Center of China's State Council - the comprehensive policy research and consulting institution operating directly under the central government of the People's Republic of China - told an audience of energy experts at a seminar that "biofuels and hydrogen are the ultimate substitutes for fossil fuels" (more about China's ambitious biofuels program, here). According to Fei, oil made from coal, which is extremely resource intensive, must be dismissed: "The biggest problems of turning coal into oil are its low energy efficiency and high emission of carbon dioxide in the production process."
Three to five tons of high-quality coal is needed to produce a ton of diesel, bringing the whole energy consumption to two to three times that of gasoline-driven cars, while the burning of the fuel emits 50 to 100 percent more carbon dioxide than that of gasoline.
With a larger reserve of coal than oil, China can make oil from coal as part of the country's strategic reserves, but large scale of production runs against China's goals to improve the efficiency of energy use and to cut pollution, said Feng.
China has ascertained oil reserves of 24.8 billion tons and coal reserves of more than one trillion tons. China is estimated to need 450 million tons of petroleum a year by 2020, with more than half to be imported [entry ends here].
ethanol :: biodiesel :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: coal-to-liquids :: climate change :: China ::
1 Comments:
Interesting quotes from the Fei. Ethanol, which is considered a biofuel, can be cleanly made from coal.
China is known for mining some of the most sulfurous coal on the planet and - because of their lack of regulatory controls - combusting it in spite of its toxic emissions. East Germany had the same problem until they merged with Western Germany. At that time they stopped burning their coal and even stopped mining it because there was no clean way to use it.
But united Germany would like to mine this coal again. So, they are looking at CTL. They are looking at syngas fermentation - taking the scrubbed gasified syngas and cleanly converting it to ethanol, not diesel, while co-generating electricity from the heat. Is it "energy efficient" - probably not in comparison to straight combustion of the coal. But the social costs of combustion pollution makes the CT ethanol process a feasible option and cost competitive (depending on gas prices and political factors).
Mind you, I'm not crazy about opening up more coal mines anywhere, but even sulfurous coal and fossil fuel derivatives like pet-coke can be cleanly converted to ethanol (which is estimated to emit 12% less greenhouse gas than gasoline). In a gradual transition from fossil to biomass, the ability of using fossil fuels blended with waste as feedstock for syngas fermentation becomes an important capability.
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