China needs new policies to kickstart biofuel sector – expert

The Chinese government needs to draw up new policies to ensure that its biofuel targets can be achieved efficiently and economically, said a researcher with the country’s regulator, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

Wang Zhongying, the assistant director of the renewable energy section of the NDRC’s Energy Research Institute, said at a conference in Beijing that the industry has so far been stumbling along without any proper product standards or market entry requirements.
The government has said that 15 pct of total vehicle gasoline and diesel demand should be met by biofuel by 2020, and it has already set up 10 ‘experimental’ biofuel promotion regions in which gasoline is mixed with ethanol, but the target might be too ambitious, Wang said.

‘It depends on whether enough land can be found to plant the crops, and it will be very hard to achieve this large-scale production target,’ he said.

Forbes