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The increasing importance of lignocellulosic biomass as a renewable energy source has led to an acute need for reliable and detailed information on its assessment, consumption and supply. With the passage of China’s legislative targets for renewable portfolio standards, agricultural residue resources have the potential for an increasing role in meeting liquid fuels demand in China. An assessment of current and near future agricultural residue resources (including agricultural crop residues and secondary agricultural processing residues) in China at national scale was conducted. This paper gave the theoretical quantity, collectable quantity, usable quantity and potential quantity for liquid biofuel production of agricultural residues in China. The spatial and seasonal distributions of crop residues were analyzed. The theoretical output of crop residues in China at national scale in the near future were forecasted by means of an artificial neural network (ANN) model. The availability of agricultural residues in China was presented, as a result, the potential of liquid biofuels from agricultural residues was discussed. The ANN predicted results have shown that the theoretical output of crop residues in China at national scale will be up to 930.8 million tons in 2015. About 44 million tons per year of bioethanol or 131 million tons per year of bio-oil would have been produced, if the total usable output of agricultural crop residues were used to produce bioethanol through biochemical conversion process or bio-oil through fast pyrolysis, which could replace 26.9 million tons of gasoline or 58.2 million tons of diesel at national scale in 2015, respectively. The above results will be helpful for commercialization of bioenergy industry and their market-oriented development strategy, so as to accelerate the development of industrialization of biofuel technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: China’s forest bioenergy policies are evolving against the backdrop of pressing national energy challenges similar to those faced by OECD countries, and chronic rural energy challenges more characteristic of developing countries. Modern forest bioenergy could contribute to solutions to both of these challenges. However, because of limitations in current technologies and institutions, significant policy and resource commitments would be required to make breakthroughs in either commercializing forest bioenergy or modernizing rural energy systems in China. Given the potential attention, funding, and resource trade-offs between these two goals, we provide an argument for why the focus of China’s forest bioenergy policy should initially be on addressing rural energy challenges. The paper concludes with a discussion on strategies for laying the groundwork for a modern, biomass-based energy infrastructure in rural China. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyze consumers’ awareness and attitudes towards biofuels implementation in road transportation sector of China with respect to different consumption groups. Firstly, the status and future trends have been reviewed, which focuses on the private vehicles development, energy demands of road transportation sector and biofuels. Furthermore, a comprehensive survey has been conducted for 374 private vehicle drivers (owners) in Nanjing. A questionnaire survey method is implemented to collect information including respondents’ awareness, brief of biofuels, selection attitudes to biofuels and views on policies. Furthermore, the biofuels selection motives of respondents have been concluded into two main factors, “purchasing pressures” and “product attraction”. Then the respondents were divided into three clusters and compared. The results indicate that 90% of the respondents need to know more about biofuels implementation, and the majority of the respondents emphasize the active significance of reducing GHG emissions to improve energy security and mitigate energy crisis. But 55.6% of the respondents think that biofuels technology is still not mature. It is found that the different perceptions of biofuels between 192 passenger vehicle drivers (PVD) and 182 freight vehicle drivers (FVD). The former focuses on fuel price and fuel performance, while the latter pays more attention to fuel availability. Besides, PVD concentrate on fuel-related attributes while FVD focus on policy-related factors. The survey results give rise to some deeply consideration about the various preferences and awareness on biofuels among different consumer groups. These findings in this study will help to understand the consumer''s energy consumption behaviors and improve the further implementation for biofuels in Nanjing city. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

By using the method of grey relative analysis, which can account for the time sequence, this paper carries out analyses for the relative relationship among the four major factors affecting the rural household biofuels consumption of each province/region in China through period 1991–1999. Based on the analytical results of the relative degrees and relative polarities, forecast models on the future consumption of crop residues and firewood in Chinese rural households are proposed. Furthermore, the future consumption of rural crop residues and firewood up to the year of 2020 is forecasted. These four factors include population per rural household, income per rural household, educational situation of laborers per rural household and food area per rural household. Results show that these four factors are closely related to rural household biofuels consumption in China. Among these, the relative relationship of population and food area per rural household to rural household biofuels consumption is positive, and that of the income and educational situation of laborers per household is negative. Forecast results show that the precision accuracies of forecast models are higher. The future total rural household biofuels consumption will decrease to 3388 PJ in 2020 from 6032 PJ in 1999 in China. The average annual decline rate in this period will reach 2.8%. This indicates that the rural household energy consumption will enter into a new stage in which biofuels will be gradually replaced by the high-quality energy types (with high combustion efficiency and easy to use), such as coal, gas, LPG and electricity, along with improvements in living standards and educational level in the rural household. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Asia’s largest biofuels producers are currently Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, China and India. This paper first examines the current status of biofuels in these countries, including the national development targets, strategies, incentives and policies. It then identifies the fundamental driving forces behind the development and promotion of these industries and considers their economic, social and environmental impacts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]