|
Food Security Worries Could Limit China Biofuels |
|
|
|
|
Written by Cameron Little
|
|
Tuesday, 27 September 2005 |
from Reuters News Service and Planet Ark ...
Food Security Worries Could
Limit China
Biofuels
-------------------------------------------------------------------
CHINA:
September 26, 2005
 BEIJING - Worries about feeding the world's most
populous nation could limit the growth of China's environmentally-friendly
biofuels industry, officials and executives said on
Friday.
Biofuels made from agricultural products ranging from
sugarcane and wheat to waste oil from cooking, are becoming increasingly
attractive as crude prices climb. Beijing bureaucrats, concerned about
rural poverty and rising oil imports, are attracted to a technology that
offers a chance to cut dependence on foreign petroleum and boost the value of
farmers' output.
Its biofuel programme, originally developed in part to
help tackle surplus corn stocks in the northeast, involves subsidised
production of over 1 million tonnes of the fuel.
Five provinces
already blend 10 percent of ethanol into all their gasoline and over 20
cities scattered across the country are also pioneering the "gasohol"
mix.
But even with the additional advantage of helping clear city skies
clouded by smog -- up to 70 percent caused by car emissions, according to
Gao Haiyang, from China's Automotive Technology and Research Centre --
the programme is unlikely to expand across the country just
yet.
 "Basically this country has such a large population that the top
priority for land use is food crops ... and at the moment they don't want
to exacerbate competition for new materials," said Sergio Trindade,
president of SE2T International.
China has long been concerned about
its food security, and although it has abandoned a Maoist-era insistence on
self-sufficiency, is still keen to meet much of its needs with domestic
production.
CELLULOSE HOPE?
China's scientists hope that
farming by-products like straw and corn stalks, or even forest residues,
could offer a longer-term solution.
These are usually burnt, but contain
cellulose that can be broken down into ethanol -- although currently it is
too expensive to be commercially viable.
"Cellulose provides a renewable
fuel option without concerns about food safety and land requirements," said
Li Shizhong, Professor at the Biomass Engineering Centre at the China
Agricultural University.
He said China was capable of developing cheap
but reliable technology in as little as a decade, and called for a national
target of 12 million tonnes of ethanol output by 2015 to 2020.
With
the domestic market for fuel blending estimated at around 5 million tonnes,
he suggested that some of the extra production could be channelled to the
chemicals industry as a feedstock for ethylene.
Story by Emma
Graham-Harrison
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
|
|
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 27 September 2005 )
|
Home 
News 
