China aims to expand its acreage of trees suitable for providing feedstocks for power plants and biodiesel makers by 16 times during the 2010-2020 period, a senior government official said on Tuesday.
The acreage will rise to 13.3 million hectares by 2020 from a planned 833,333 hectares in 2010, enough to produce over 6 million tonnes of biodiesel a year and power generators with capacity of 15 gigawatts, said Jia Zhibang, head of the State Forestry Administration.
Jia told a regular press conference the ministry had partnered with top Chinese oil producer China National Petroleum Corp., leading grain trader COFCO and major power grid operator State Grid Corp. to gets its foot in the bioenergy sector.
He did not say how much biodiesel was currently produced from trees or give details on generating capacity reliant on forestry feed.
China had a total of 622 gigawatts of installed generating
capacity as of late 2006. Output for diesel totaled 117 million tonnes last year.
China has been anxious to boost its use of alternative energy in recent years as its heavy reliance on burning coal to meet energy needs has caused serious environmental problems.
The government plans to reduce the percentage of coal in consumption to 66.1 percent by 2010 from 69.1 percent in 2005, while improve renewable energy usage, excluding hydropower, to 0.4 percent from 0.1 percent.Reuters
