China gets a spurt of new energy

To help ease its oil shortage while reducing its increasing reliance on oil imports, China is putting effort and money into research and development (R&D) for new sources of energy, in addition to speeding up its ambitious coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel projects, intended to convert the country’s abundant coal resources into liquid fuel.

There are now signs that the Chinese government is increasing its support for biomass energy, and development of fuel ethanol as a kind of biomass energy is entering a rapid-growth stage. Due to the peculiarities of renewable energy, to industrialize production of various kinds of renewable energy, including fuel ethanol, needs policy support from the government, especially during the preliminary stages.
China’s 11th Five-Year Plan for Social and Economic
Development (2006-2010) clearly stipulates that the production capacity of fuel ethanol will be expanded over the next five years.

In a national conference on financial affairs held in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, early this month, Vice Minister of Finance Zhu Zhigang stressed it was now an important task of his ministry to give financial support to R&D and practical application of various kinds of renewable energy, such as biomass energy, solar energy and wind power.

It is worth noting that in his talk, Zhu mentioned biomass first. Previously, China had always put wind power first in government documents concerning renewable energy development. This indicates that as the wind power industry matures, China is shifting its focus of official support for renewable energy to biomass energy.

Asia Times