China plans to roll out the use of ethanol fuel nationally by 2020, as Beijing intensifies its push to boost industrial demand for corn and clean up choking smog.
It is the first time the government has set a targeted timeline for pushing the biofuel, known as E10 and containing 10 per cent ethanol, across the world’s largest car market, although it has yet to announce a formal policy.
Mandates requiring a minimum amount of biofuel to be blended into fuel for the nation’s cars, similar to the United States and Brazil, are currently set at a provincial level.
The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the acrid smog in cities, while making better use of expired or excess agricultural produce.
Ethanol can be made from both sucrose (beet or sugarcane) and corn, of which China has an estimated surplus of more than 200 million tonnes.
Shares of biofuel producers rallied on the news. A renewed effort to promote the nation’s fledgling biofuels industry will be a further blow to major oil producers.
China’s use of renewable-based fuel lags behind the rest of the world, with only three million tonnes consumed last year, or less than 1 per cent of total fuel use.
The Government also aims to have large- scale domestic production of cellulosic biofuels, which are made from sources such as grass, trees and crop waste, by 2025.
“China produces more than 400 million tonnes of straw and forestry waste each year,” the energy administration said, noting 30 per cent of this could be used to produce 20 million tonnes of biofuel.
China is currently the world’s third-largest ethanol producer, but with an output of about 2.1 million tonnes a year, production is a long way behind global leaders Brazil and the US.
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Source: The Straits Times, 14 September 2017