Firing up opportunities for European biomass companies

Relationship opportunities

EU researchers have started a project to help China reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its predominantly coal-fired power stations and at the same time and enable European companies working in the field to build commercial relationships with power generators in the country.

The €90,000 China EU Bioenergy project (ChEuBio), funded by the European Commission, will evaluate commercial possibilities of cofiring biomass in China’s coal-fired power stations to cut dependence on fossil fuel and reduce pollution.

The project’s coordinator, Andrew Minchener, of the Bioenergy Research Group at Aston University in Birmingham, UK, said the potential impact of substituting coal with a carbon dioxide neutral fuel is large. “If half of the biomass wastes currently produced in China could be utilised in the existing power plants it could displace over 200 million tonnes of coal.”

Over 70 per cent of all energy consumed in China comes from coal, making it a promising territory for EU companies looking to market cofiring technology there.

Cofiring, not currently practiced in China, involves burning coal and biomass together – mainly straw, reed, rice husks, and wastes from crops and wood. This cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions because biomass is a carbon neutral, releasing the same amount of carbon when it is burned as it absorbs while growing.

China's huge scale and widely distributed farms make the logistics of biomass collection and transport challenging. ChEuBio will gather data on the biomass sources and availability, undertake case studies of various plants to assess possibilities for cofiring, and determine the commercial potential for cofiring in China.

Aston’s Bioenergy Research Group will use geographic modelling to evaluate the potential of using various biomass feedstocks in different regions of China, and communicate the findings to the Chinese power industry and policy makers in the country.