China has become a huge consumer of energy today, and in fact, recent annual increase rate of energy consumption has been staying more than 9 %. In 2009 Chinese energy consumption reached 2,252 million ton COE (crude oil equivalent), and exceeded America's energy consumption with 2,170 million ton COE. At last, China became the world's greatest energy consumption country. The United States, which has held the top spot for around 100 years, ceded top position to China.

The Chinese primary energy depends on coal greatly. The primary energy supply in 2007 amounted to 1,981.62 million ton COE, of which 65% came from coal. Biomass energy’s share was 9.8 %. Chinese government plans to greatly expand the use of renewable energy as much as possible so that it may save conventional energy, and it plans to increase the proportion of biomass energy up to 15 % by 2020. As regard the domestic consumption of fuels, the share of biofuels was as small as only 2 %, but the government intends to raise the share up to 15 % by 2020.

China has been an agricultural country endowed with abundant biomass resources. Some 700 million ton of waste agricultural products are being generated every year. The traditional use of waste biomass has been direct burning for heating purpose. But today, China is adopting much advanced methods that employ gasification and liquefaction technique, and the waste biomass is changed to more environment-conscious products. In order to promote production/utilization of biofuels, Chinese government is paying a subsidy of 0.4 US$ (34 yen) for producing one liter of biofuel.

China’s introduction scheme for biofuels dictates that annual production capability for bioethanol to be raised to 10 million ton, and that of biodiesel to be 2 million ton by 2020. As regard the raw materials for the biofuels, corn and cassava are used for producing bioethanol, and waste food oil is used for biodiesel. But in future non-food plants such as cellulose and jatropha will be used in place of the food crops. Stable supply of staple foods is by far the largest concern of Chinese government that is responsible for maintaining the welfare of 1.3 billion people.

Table  Supply of Primary Energy in China (2007; million ton COE)

	Coal	Crude Oil	Natural Gas	Nuclear	Hydro	Geothermal/ Solar	Biomass	Total
Domestic Production	1,312.15	186.42	57.93	16.19	41.73	5.06	194.5	1,813.98
Import	27.78	205.82	3.36	0	0	0	0	236.96
Export	-45.17	-21.99	-2.16	0	0	0	0	-69.32
Primary Supply	1,294.76	370.25	59.13	16.19	41.73	5.06	194.5	1,981.62

 

Fig.  Supply of Primary Energy in China (2007; million ton COE)

 

Table  China’s Production Capacity for Biofuels (unit: million ton)

year	2005	2006	2010	2020
Bioethanol	1.34	1.56	2.00	10.00
Biodiesel	0.13	0.19	0.20	2.00

 

Fig.  China’s Production Capacity for Biofuels

 

Fig.  China is 25 times as large as Japan

 

Source:
1) Website of IEA (International Energy Agency); http://www.iea.org/
2) http://www.spc.jst.go.jp/hottopics/0904reuseenergy/r0904_chen.html
3) http://rightsite.asia/en/article/china-biofuel-industry-provides-opportunities-agribusiness
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