Front. Energy Power Eng. China 2007, 1(1): 18 DOI 10.

1007/s11708-007-0001-2

REVIEW ARTICLE

NI Weidou

Chinas energychallenges and strategies

Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag 2007

Abstract In this century, China started facing five major challenges in the energy field: energy supply, shortage of liquid fuel, environmental pollution, green house gas (GHG) emission, and energy supply in rural areas. In this paper, the Chinese energy development strategy and general technical scheme (including energy conservation, utilization of coal, alternative fuel and renewable energy) are discussed, and some key scientific problems in the fundamental research of energy are put forward. Keywords energy challenges, sustainable development, polygeneration system, CO2 reduction

punishment to mankind is becoming more and more catastrophic.

Some unchangeable facts

Introduction

If todays trend of the utilization of fossil fuel continues (BAU technology), we will be running out of ATMOSPHERE faster than were running out of fossil fuels. Terrorism doesnt threaten the viability of the heart of our high technology life-style, but energy and relative environment really do. In recent years, energy and energy-related environmental problems have increasingly become the central issues in the world. Every country is making concerted efforts to solve this problem. In China, these problems are more serious because of the shortage of energy reserves per capita (especially oil, gas, and water), and the limitation of the environmental carrying capacity and the fragile ecology of the west. They will become the bottleneck of sustainable development and will influence the living conditions of the subsequent generations. In the past ten years, the average GDP rate of increase was more than 10%, which was achieved by huge consumption of fossil fuel,serious pollution and degradation of ecology. Therefore, such disordered plundering of nature has already been resulting in serious irreversible consequences. Natures
Received October 15, 2006; accepted November 20, 2006 NI Weidou ( ) Department of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China E-mail: niwd@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn

Coal is dominant in the energy mix not only at present, but also in the next 4050 years. Its percentage will be lowered gradually from 75%60%, but the total amount will be increasing. More coal, from about 50% in 2006 to 70% in 2020, will be used for power generation. The exploration and utilization of coal have already been causing severe pollution and ecological degradation. 70% 80% or more SO2, NOX, Hg, particulates and CO2 are caused by direct combustion of coal. The coal-derived alternative is the way out for mitigating the shortage of liquid vehicle fuel. The amount of crude oil and related products imported in 2005 was about 130 million tons, and the estimated amount will be 250 million tons by 2010. The energy security problem is quite rigorous. Compared with oil, coal reserves in China is relatively abundant. If 1/8 of the coal production would be used for coalderived alternative fuels (production of about 50 million ton alternatives), the problem of vehicle fuel shortage will be mitigated significantly, without causing an imbalance in energy supply. About 5 years ago, China extensively developed cornderived ethanol. But corn-derived ethanol cannot be a reasonable alternative in the long-term because in China, 7% of the world farming land should provide food for 22% of the world population. As far as present technology is concerned, 3.5 tons of corn should be used to produce 1 ton of ethanol. In terms of heating value difference, about 5 tons of corn is equivalent to 1 ton of gasoline. Besides, 0.50.8 tons of coal must be consumed for the fermentation and drying of corn. This means that 10 million tons of gasoline-equivalent alternatives should consume 50 million tons of corn, which is a very large portion of the corn production in China. Surely, cassava root, sweet sorghum and even different kinds of cellulose could be used to produce ethanol, but they have not been commercialized yet, and large-scale collection and

2 transportation under Chinas condition (highly scattered) will be a big problem. It is quite difficult to solve the problem of CO2 reduction with direct combustion of coal because of the huge volumetric flow rate of the flue gas and low concentration of CO2 (13%14%). CO2 capture is a high energy-consuming process, and it will lower the efficiency of the power plants by about 10 percentage points. Currently, the emission of green house gas (GHG) in China is about 4 billion tons, ranking 2nd in the world. If this trend continues, China will rank 1st in the world in GHG emission in the coming ten or more years. Renewable energy, mainly wind, solar and biomass, cannot play a significant role in the energy mix, because of the very rapid increase of energy demand. Taking power generation as an example, the annual increase of the installed capacity in the last three years was more than 6080 GW, which is more than Englands total installed capacity. Therefore, the share of renewable energy will be quite limited in this period. According to the State Plan, the installed capacity of wind power will reach 30 GW by the year 2020, which is 24 times as much as that in 2005. Taking into consideration the fact that average equivalent operating hours of wind power is approximately 2 500 hr, then 30 GW wind power is equivalent to less than 15 GW of coal-fired capacity. By the year 2020, the total installed capacity of power generation will be 9501 000 GW, in which the share of wind power will only be about 1.5%. energy demand and supply have greatly exceeded the estimated amount. Looking at the different stages of industrial development of other countries, China is now entering the so called heavy-chemical period, in which rapid increase of energy demand is unavoidable. The problem is how to ensure such tremendous energy supply? Does China have sufficient environmental carrying capacity to meet this demand? 3.2 Shortage of liquid fuels

As shown in Fig. 1, the oil import dependence will rise from 40%60% by the year 20102015. How can the country deal with the energy security problem? How will it speed up the production and utilization of alternative fuels? To solve these problems, Chinas automobile and refinery industries should take this opportunity to innovate and to develop more new technologies with their own intellectual property rights. 3.3 Severe pollution

The pollutants are mainly SO2, NOx, PM2.510, Hg and CO2, which are caused by direct combustion of fossil fuels, especially coal. Currently, about 30%40% of Chinas territory, especially the southwest, is suffering from acid rain and respiratory system diseases are continuously increasing. The acceptable environmental carrying capacity and limitation of these pollutants should be studied in depth. 3.4 GHG emission

The five challenges facing China

At present, the global CO2 emission is about 25 billion tons. In the 150 years since the industrial revolution, the concentration of CO2 in the air has been rising from 280380 ppm, with a rate of increase of 3 ppm annually. GHG has been causing disasters to mankind and these disasters are getting more and more serious. After drawn out arguments and discussions, scientists and experts from different countries came up with a common understanding and recognition concerning GHG.

3.1 Tremendous energy demand and huge pressure on energy supply According to the State Plan, from 2000 to 2020, there will be a four-fold increase of GDP and two-fold of energy consumption, which means that the energy elasticity coefficient is 0.5. But, in the last 3 years, this coefficient was more than 1.3. The

Fig. 1 Oil production and consumption in China

3 Therefore, diverse measures have been taken to mitigate CO2 emission. China signed the Kyoto Protocol as the 37th country to do so in 2002. Generally speaking, as a large country, China must take the responsibility of mitigating CO2 emission according to its international obligation. The country must seriously consider the strategy and policy for CO2 mitigation from now on. Otherwise, it will inevitably pay a huge additional cost for reducing GHG emission in the years to come. 3.5 Energy supply to 800 million rural residents and problems related to the fast urbanization process Up to now, a considerable number of rural residents have no proper energy service. They are still relying on agriculture and forestry wastes, and some even still cut trees and dig the roots of grass for fuel, which cause ecological degradation. Besides, the rate of urbanization is 1% annually, which means that about 10 million rural residents are moving to towns and cities every year. Statistics show that the energy consumption per capita for urban residents is 3.5 times higher than that of rural ones. Where should this huge amount of energy come from? How should modern energy service be provided to rural areas and newly constructed small- and medium-sized towns in carrying out the state plan of the construction of a new countryside? How will the people live in harmony with the nature? These are the very important issues of an integrated energy strategy. are weaknesses in implementation, and confusion in statistics; there are more calls and slogans, but there are less workable detailed plans; the energy consumption enterprises, organizations and individuals have no incentive and driving force for energy conservation. (4) The traditions, customs, culture, concepts and moral standard: in some sense, people have no consciousness for energy conservation. They dont feel that they must have this obligation. Instead, they are only thinking of enjoying the benefits of modern life. Moreover, in many large cities in China, many people are copying the so-called Western way of life. Some people are proud of their luxurious and wasteful mode of life. Though the Central Government has issued a series of documents calling for a recycling and energy conservation society, these kinds of calls have turned out only to be slogans and shows. From the point of view of science and technology, energy conservation has a very broad scope, ranging from fundamental research to applied research, development and commercialization. For instance, it deals with the enhancement of heat transfer and mass transfer, multi-phase flow, integration of diverse renewable energy (solar, wind, biomass, underground heat/cool resources), and their high-efficiency complex systems, new types of heat and electricity storage installations, innovation of thermodynamic cycles, and integration and optimization of different sectors of the industry. Generally speaking, energy conservation is a kind of cleanest energy, the potential of which is huge. Therefore, it provides a vast area for scientists and policy makers to display their cleverness, wisdom and intelligence. 4.2 Modernization utilization of coal

Several important strategic measures

Energy, with its related environmental problems, is a large complex system that is closely connected with science, technology, culture, heritage, education, diplomacy, politics, etc, all of which are interrelated and mutually related. This paper discusses only several important strategic technological measures, which is far from the solution of the whole problem. 4.1 Take energy conservation as essence Though China is facing a problem of energy shortage and huge pressure on energy supply, its energy intensity is also high, approximately 56 times higher than that of Japan. The reasons are as follows. (1) Structure of the industry: large portions of industries have high energy consumption with low value-added products such as the manufacturing industry. (2) Backwardness of technology: the specific energy consumption of the power plants, cement, fertilizers, iron and steel, and aluminum industries in China is 20%30% higher than those of the advanced countries. (3) Policy and regulations: the energy conservation index is usually a soft index, whereas GDP is the hard one. There is no strong coordination between diverse policies, but there

As mentioned above, in several decades to come, coal will still play a dominant role (50%60% in 2050) and coal utilization will contribute to about 70%75% of CO2 (at present 76.3%), and SO2, NOx, PM2.510, Hg in China. At present, about 45%50% of coal is used for power generation, and in the future it will reach 80%, which means that coal-fired power plants will contribute to 60% or more of the total amount of CO2 by 2050. Further, the capture of CO2 from the flue gas of power plants with direct combustion of coal is investment intensive and with unaffordable large (per unit CO2) energy consumption. The polygeneration system based on coal gasification is the strategic direction of Chinas energy to meet the requirements of the above mentioned five challenges. The block diagram of polygeneration is shown in Fig. 2. The syngas (CO+H2) via coal gasification after cleaning is used for the production of chemicals, liquid fuels (FT liquid, methanol, dimethyl ether, etc.) and electric power. All the energy flow, material flow and exergy flow of these processes are coupled together and optimized. In comparison with stand-alone production, the benefits in capital investment, cost of unit products and pollution reduction (sulfur, Hg and

Fig. 2 Block diagram of polygeneration system

particulates) are very significant (more than 10%). At the same time, polygeneration is a quite flexible system. It can adjust the peak-valley of its products according to the market demand. The liquid fuels produced by polygeneration, especially methanol and dimethyl ether (DME), are suitable alternatives for vehicle fuels, and can significantly mitigate the shortage of oil in China. Furthermore, methanol can be used to produce olefin and propene (MTO and MTP), thus, coal-chemistry will partially play the role of traditional petroleum-chemistry to reduce the consumption of oil. Dimethyl ether has a physical property close to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), except for its use as alternative for diesel oil, and it is an excellent civil fuel, providing clean energy to residents. Along with the total technological processes, high concentration and high pressure CO2 can be separated and is relatively easier to be captured, thus, the cost will be much less than capturing the CO2 from flue gas of conventional power plants. Polygeneration is a sustainable, technically consistent, technologically realistic (no special technology breakthrough needed), economically beneficial and ecologically friendly way of CO2 capture and further sequestration. With the progress of technology, if the high-temperature solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is applied to the polygeneration system, the potential of improvement of efficiency is large, and the power generation efficiency could reach 60% 65%, which will be a symbolic new mile-stone of power generation. The majority of technologies of polygeneration systems, such as large-scale coal gasification, different chemical reactors with appropriate catalysts, advanced gas/steam

combined cycle fueled by syngas, etc., are mature. If a concerted effort of different industrial sectors including mining, chemical and power generation, plus substantial international cooperation are made, several commercialized demo plants will have been constructed within 5 years. If successful, it is quite optimistic to have a wide deployment by 20102020. In the second step, the technical chain of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCS) must be extended. The key technologies that need cross-disciplinary study are: Carbon capture, utilization (enhancement of oil recovery, enhancement of coal bed methane and others) and sequestration. Large-scale, reliable, high efficiency and low oxygen consumption coal gasifiers. Membrane separation of O2, N2 and other gases. Once-through liquid-phase reactors with high yield. Combustion system of syngas with high H2 content, even pure H2; new control system of the multi-fuel system. System integration, optimization, operation safety, fault diagnostics, off-design operation. Solid oxide fuel cell and its coupling in polygeneration systems. All these key problems reveal a broad panorama of research projects. The necessity of a continuous effort of one or more generations of scholars is not an overestimation. 4.3 Coal-derived alternative fuel and vehicle engines

The shortage of liquid fuel is a bottleneck in the sustainable development of China. The rapid development of the

5 automobile industry and the increase of accumulated automobile parks make this problem more and more urgent. In 2005, the production of vehicles in China was 5.7 million, ranking 3rd in the world (U.S. and Japan were the 1st and 2nd). As a consequence, there is a rapid increase of vehicle fuels, of which the average increase rate in recent years is 12%. The consumption of gasoline and diesel oil were 47.7 million tons and 85.13 million tons, respectively. Under the condition of limitation of oil reserves and production, and the necessity to ensure the security of supply, coal-derived methanol and DME as vehicle fuels is the inevitable way-out. Methanol, as an alternative for gasoline, has high octane number; the compression ratio can be raised from 912, and thus, higher thermal efficiency can be obtained. According to the heating value, the thermal efficiency of methanol is only half of gasoline, but because of the efficiency increase, the equivalent ratio can be raised up to 1.6:1. Surely, a series of problems, such as metal corrosion, swelling of rubber seals, difficulty of cold start, and emission of formaldehyde, etc., occur when using methanol. But after years of efforts, these problems have already been solved in principle. Low blend ratio (10%) needs only minor modification of the engine, but higher blend ratio (85% or more) needs a special new engine design and fuel system. Some domestic research and manufacturing organizations have designed these kinds of engines and the operation (more than a thousand buses and cars) is quite promising. Of course, a lot of research and development ought to be done, of which the accumulation of operation experiences, long-term endurance test on reliability, and formulation of standards and policies are the most important ones. As an alternative for diesel oil, DME has a high cetane number, near perfect combustion, and can easily satisfy the emission standard of Euro III. With a more sophisticated optimization of the combustion system, it can reach the emission standard of Euro IV and V. Further, its NOX emission is only 50% of the diesel oil and its soot is even lower. The problem is that DME is not at a liquid phase unless there is a pressure of more than 510 kPa. Moreover, the viscosity is only 1/30 of the diesel oil, and the Yang-mode coefficient is small, etc. Therefore, the modification of the fuel injection system, the erosion of the components and accurate control of injection time still deserve intensive study. Obviously, any new alternative fuel and its application to cars will pass a long-lasting arduous period, and will be accompanied by a series of problems. The Chinese scientists and scholars should make double efforts to solve these problems. The application of methanol and DME to cars is a good chance for self-innovation, to promote and enhance the domestic automobile industry to gain more intellectual property rights of our own, because only a few international companies are currently conducting research and development on DME cars and trucks. If China strengthens activities in this direction, maybe we could have a leap-frog achievement. Surely, the coal-derived alternatives will generate much more CO2 during their production, so a CCS system should be seriously considered, and should sooner or later be implemented. Non-corn ethanol production and 10% ethanol blended gasoline are also among the feasible ways for mitigating the shortage of oil. The key issue is that those plants should not contend with farming land and water against foods and other products that are important in peoples daily life. Furthermore, they should be highly productive. Bio-diesel is quite mature from a technical perspective. What is important is the available resources of the plants (or their seeds) with high oil content. It is a very important project for agriculture experts to cultivate productive energy plants that are drought and alkali resistant, by using the most advanced technology in biology. Talking about alternative fuels, one of the dreams is to use hydrogen fuel cells (especially PEMFC), which is regarded as a significant part of the so-called hydrogen economy. Hydrogen is only an energy carrier, and is obtained by using other types of primary energy such as coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, renewable energy, etc. One confusing saying is that hydrogen is water to water. But the fact is that to produce 1 kg of hydrogen, 4550 kWh of electricity and 9 kg of pure water must be consumed, and electricity is mainly generated by using fossil fuel. In order to deploy PEMFC, a series of very tough technological breakthroughs, such as H2 production, distribution, storage (especially on-board storage), infrastructure construction, and high-price Pt as catalyst, etc., are needed. In this sense, it is reasonable to conduct researches and set up several demos; the commercialization of hydrogen fuel-cell cars still needs at least 1520 years. At the time being, the world-wide boom of hybrid cars with diverse configurations, especially Plug-in hybrid cars, is a signal that shows that the advancement of electricity storage combined with the mode of application will have a large potential of further development. At the same time, a widely developed electrical grid has covered the majority of the civilized regions. It is unnecessary and impossible to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building a hydrogen network. Therefore, hydrogen fuel cell cars are only one of the options for the future, and are not the highest target or dream, as estimated and expected by some optimists. 4.4 Rational utilization of renewable energy according to local conditions The features of renewable energy are their low energy density and their random uncontrollable characteristic. Therefore, the rational utilization of renewable energy should closely be related to the concrete situation of each country and local areas, such as development degree of the local economy, distribution of energy and other resources, distribution of population, energy use per capita, energy supply and consumption mode, availability of technology and investment, stage of social development, etc. The blind copying of the

6 foreign mode is not the right way for China. In recent years, because of the high price of oil, awareness of the gradual exhaustion of fossil fuels and severe environmental pollution, renewable energy has been gaining more and more attention. Unfortunately, up to now, there is no rationally coordinated planning of different primary energy resources (coal, hydraulic, oil, natural gas, nuclear), and the strategic position of renewable energy is not clear. The energy issue of a country is a whole integrated system, including transformation of different energy resources, electricity transmission and energy transportation, and various types of energy (alternative current and direct current of electricity with different voltages, high temperature heat, low temperature heat, mechanical energy, etc.). Finally, all of this energy provides appropriate energy service to billions of end-users. If renewable energy as a kind of energy is inserted to the whole energy system with influential share, the whole energy system should be adjusted with the consideration of its unique feature, in order to have its appropriate position and to bring renewable energy into full play. Otherwise, though a lot of efforts are made and large sums of money are invested in the development of renewable energy, the benefit will be small. So it should be a principle to utilize renewable energy according to the local condition. In other words, the right energy should be put in the right place. There are various types of renewable energy. The most effective ones are wind energy, solar energy and biomass energy. 4.4.1 Wind energy China has quite abundant wind energy resources. The existing estimation is 254 GW (with the height of 10 m) in-land, and 750 GW off-shore. These data are only an approximation. For modern wind mills, the resources at a height of 5070 m are more important. At present, the state organizations are conducting detailed surveys of wind resources, which will last at least several years. By the end of 2005, the total installed capacity of wind power was 1 260 MW and the electricity generated was about 0.1% of the total amount of the whole country. Of the operating units, about 75% were imported, and 25% were made domestically. The capacities of wind power units with our own intellectual property rights are 600 kW, 750 kW, 1.2 MW and 1.5 MW; the latter two types still need improving. We think that we should not be in such a hurry to construct so many wind farms. The essence is to speed up the research and development of domestic large wind power units (1.53 MW), to cultivate the advanced domestic wind power industry. The first priority is to master the key technologiesintegrated optimization of whole units, aerodynamic design of the long blades, vibration, fatigue strength, long-term and reliable operation under harsh conditions (low and high ambient temperature, sand storms, hurricanes, etc.), control, materials and manufacturing. So that in 35 years, the domestic wind power industry could produce large, advanced and modern wind power units with the same performance as those of the imported ones. It is abnormal, in some sense, to let hundreds of companies involved in the integrated design and assembly of wind mills. Because of the lack of the technology of our own intellectual property rights, the common business mode is to invite a foreign company as a partner and pay the royalty. Certainly, it will have a negative impact to the healthy development of wind energy in China. The government and policy makers should concentrate the limited funds and grant on cultivating the domestic wind power research and development, and further its commercialization to meet the requirements of rapid development in the future. There are some other restrictions on Chinas wind power development. Xinjiang Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are abundant in wind resources, but are relatively backward in economics, the capacity of the local grid is small, and load demand is not urgent. As a result, the price of electricity is relatively low. In this case, the local electric bureau have no incentive to develop wind power, because larger investment in the development of wind power will lower their profits. Therefore, which place should be given priority to develop wind power? Is it the coastal areas in the southeast? Besides, is the grid connection of wind power the only way of its utilization? China has a lot of highenergy consuming industries, such as the chlorine-alkali industry (3 000 kWh/t) and electrolytic aluminum industry (15 000 kWh/t). 60% or more of the cost of these products mainly depends on the cost of electricity, which is obtained from the grid with various steps of transformation (from high voltage to low one, from AC to DC). Is it possible to provide electricity for these industries according to their requirements (low voltage, large direct current) without connecting them with the grid to eliminate the negative impact of connecting wind power to the grid and simplify the equipments for grid connection? For instance, is it possible to simplify the gearbox, the speed control system and expensive generator control? If it is so, the cost of wind power facilities will be greatly reduced, the electrical current with low and varying frequency will be easily rectified and fed to the technological process without intermediate steps of transformation. The above-described concept is just like the concept of distributed supply of energy (electricity/heat/cool), to bring the end users closer to the energy provider not only in distance but also in the energy sort, that is, to have a short-cut supply. This new concept deserves careful study. Generally speaking, the concrete condition in China should always be taken into consideration in developing wind power. 4.4.2 Solar energy

Solar photovoltaic energy system (PV) is surely a very prospective direction. Unfortunately, the cost of electricity generated by PV is much higher than that of conventional power generation. Therefore, in order to have a greater share in power generation, there is still a long way to go, especially in supplying materials with extra purity and obtaining high

7 conversion efficiency. Fundamental and applied researches are needed with the strong support of the government and enterprises. There are a lot of versions of solar-heat power generation projects, and several demo-plants have already been constructed in some countries. No doubt, it is necessary to conduct fundamental research and development on the key components, and the construction of small-scale demos. But, in essence, is it the main stream of solar energy utilization? Solar power is energy with very low energy density. Is it the right direction to focus solar energy with the help of enormous amounts of mirrors in order to raise the temperature of the media to adopt the requirement of the Carnot-Cycle? From the point of view of being harmonious with nature, the principle is that the distributed energy should be used in a distributed way. Distributed energy should provide suitable energy service to the distributed end users. In China, the necessity of developing a large-scale solar heat power generation system deserves further evaluation. It is not rational to follow the practice of foreign countries. Solar heat utilization is the most realistic, most prospective and most potentially significant way of solar energy utilization. China has the worlds advanced technology in solar vacuum-tube heat collectors, including the special coating materials with the highest absorption ratio, relative technology, and also wide-spread applications. The total amount of solar vacuum-tube heat collectors is 60 million square meters, ranking 1st in the world. Presently, the majority of the solar heat collectors are used for hot water, but there is great potential and prospect for the energy conservation of buildings. Because of the rapid increase of residential and commercial buildings in China, the energy used for air conditioning and heating is increasing correspondingly, which has now reached 30% of the national total. Therefore, utilization of solar heat collectors, integration with the building architecture, paying more attention to medium and high temperatures solar heat collectors, and combination with underground heat/ coal sources using heat pumps are the essential issues. There are a variety of new systems that could reduce the fossil fuel consumption (including electricity). The essence of energy consumption for buildings is to cool the room temperature to be 78 C lower than the ambient temperature in summer and 1620 C higher than ambient temperature in winter season. For this purpose, the present way of energy use is through multi-stage transformation (chemical energy of fossil fuels transforms to thermal energy with temperature higher than 1 500 C via combustion, through heat and mass transfer via special media to mechanical energy, and then electricity) and long-distance transmission. This kind of long march only solves the problem of adjusting the temperature difference by about 1020 C. How to tightly combine the essentially distributed building energy consumption with the distributed solar heat is a problem of great significance. To promote the implementation of new solar systems, the new cognition of architects and new regulations are badly needed. 4.4.3 Biomass

Corn and the non-corn derived vehicle ethanol were analyzed in previous paragraphs. The total reserve of agriculture wastes (straw, stalk) is only equivalent to about 300 million tons of standard coal equivalent (tce). The forestry waste is about 300 million tce as well. Hence, the total amount is quite limited, and the per capita is even less. This situation is essentially different in comparison with US (big farms), Brazil (enormous amount of sugar-cane) and some Northern European countries. In Sweden, for example, the area is 40 000 km2 with a population 8 million, but the forest coverage is 80%. The farming land per capita in China is only 1/15 hectare; the biomass yield per capita is small, and highly scattered. Therefore, mechanically copying the practices of other countries may not be suitable for China. Biomass is a highly scattered energy resource. This is especially the case in China. In the first order, if it should be used as forage and be used to maintain the quality of the soil, the portion used as energy should not be so large. The best way for biomass utilization is to be in harmony with nature and be used in a distributed way. The new technology and innovative method of on-site processing, on-site utilization should be developed. The lessons and experiences of many years implementation of small scale gasification and liquefaction might be learned. A promising method is biomass (also all celluloses) pelletizing using innovative principles. The key issue is to have less energy consumption per ton of pellets and without heating and additives. This kind of pellets is very convenient for cooking and heating with minor pollution. It is an effective way to solve modern energy problems in the countryside. By so doing, the coal used by each family in rural areas with low efficiency and high emission could be replaced by biomass pellets (whereas in the southern by biogas). The huge amount of replaced coal could be used in large power plants with high efficiency and low emission. Besides, there are hundreds and thousands of small residential and industrial boilers, whose total coal consumption is about 200300 Mt, and whose efficiency is about 65%. Biomass pellets can also be used to replace a certain amount of coal burnt by these boilers. The guideline of National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is to promote biomass-fired power generation with a subsidy of RMB 0.23 yuan/kWh. As a result, several local electrical grid companies are quite enthusiastic in the construction of biomassfired power plants with a capacity of 25 MW. The specific capital investment of such kind of power plants is twice as high as that of conventional large coal-fired ones but the efficiency is low (about 30%) because of the corrosion of the superheater tubes. Moreover, it is not easy to collect the biomass [one 25 MW power plant needs 160 000 tons of biomass each year, and a great deal of other fuels (diesel oil) was consumed to transport these very low energy density biomass]. Under this guidance, there appears a very strange phenomenon, that is, the coal exploited concentratedly are

8 being transported to distributed farmer houses to be used with low efficiency and high emission, but the highly scattered biomass are being collected from a vast area for small-scale power generation with high cost. To do so, a special and complicated transportation system must be arranged. It is unreasonable from the total life-cycle analysis, so, this policy is quite questionable. Obviously, power generation in China mainly relies on coal-fired power plants of 1 000 MW per unit with supercritical and ultra-supercritical steam parameters. The utilization of the biomass for power generation, in a sense, is not in harmony with nature and is a waste of labor and valuable investment. Third, an important trend in the development of energy systems in the 21st century is the integration of different types of energy conversion systems, and the cascade and optimized utilization of physical and chemical energy. Some of the individual technologies are reaching their limits. For instance, the efficiency of the high-performance axial-flow compressor is already about 88%90%, the gas temperature of advanced gas turbine is approaching 1 400C or more. Though there is still some possibility to increase the thermal efficiency of 1%2%, it is very difficult to do so. However, the integration of chemical processes and power generation will provide significant energy/environment/economics (3E) benefits. Polygeneration is just an outstanding example. This concept could be applied to the development of other new systems, such as COREX, which is a combination of iron-making, power generation and chemical production. Therefore, Chinas industry must consider everything in terms of the max 3E benefits, and break the existing boundaries between sectors. Fourth, Chinas specific situation should be taken into consideration as far as the utilization of renewable energy is concerned. The optimized position of renewable energy should be found in the whole energy system. Priority of the research should be what renewable energy should do instead of what renewable energy can do. Fifth, the utilization of renewable energy, the alternation of liquid vehicle fuels by electric batteries, and the adjustment of peak-valley of electrical grid, all need the storage of electricity of large, medium and small capacities. Therefore, this is the most important scientific problem we are facing. Concentrated efforts should be made both in the fundamental, applied researches, demonstration and commercialization of this direction.

Conclusions

First, the mode of development of the over-consumption of resources and energy, and the severe pollution of the environment is not sustainable. The mode of development that is thrifty and harmonious with the nature must be adopted firmly and decidedly. Otherwise, natures punishment will get severe, and as a result, we must inevitably pay the heavy cost in the future. Second, the scientific research and technology development should focus on the programs and projects that can mitigate the five severe challenges as mentioned above. Surely, some fundamental and forward-seeing projects should be developed, but we must know which should be developed firstly with much more government support and which should be developed with less support.