Abstract
Assessment of the potential CO2 emission reduction by development of non-grain-based ethanol in China is valuable for both setting up countermeasures against climate change and formulating bioethanol policies. Based on the land occupation property, feedstock classification and selection are conducted, identifying sweet sorghum, cassava, and sweet potato as plantation feedstocks cultivated from low-quality arable marginal land resources and molasses and agricultural straws as nonplantation feedstocks derived from agricultural by-products. The feedstock utilization degree, CO2 reduction coefficient of bioethanol, and assessment model of CO2 emission reduction potential of bioethanol are proposed and established to assess the potential CO2 emission reduction by development of non-grain-based bioethanol. The results show that China can obtain emission reduction potentials of 10.947 and 49.027 Mt CO2 with non-grain-based bioethanol in 2015 and 2030, which are much higher than the present capacity, calculated as 1.95 Mt. It is found that nonplantation feedstock can produce more bioethanol so as to obtain a higher potential than plantation feedstock in both 2015 and 2030. Another finding is that developing non-grain-based bioethanol can make only a limited contribution to China’s greenhouse gas emission reduction. Moreover, this study reveals that the regions with low and very low potentials for emission reduction will dominate the spatial distribution in 2015, and regions with high and very high potentials will be the majority in 2030.
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Notes
An interview was conducted with eight experts from four research fields on January 19, 2009, to determine the FUD: Shi Yulin and Zhang Hongqi (land use), Shen Lei and Wang Gehua (bioenergy), Zhao Jian’an and Gu Shuzhong (resource economics), and Xie Gaodi and Zhen Lin (ecology). The final result was integrated and improved from these experts’ suggestions.
The potential CO2 emission reduction by wind power is calculated through the installed capacity, fully loaded operation period, and CO2 reduction coefficient of wind power. Here, the installed capacity data come from Li and others (2008), the fully loaded operation period is assumed to be 2000 h, and the CO2 reduction coefficient for wind power equals 600 g (CO2)/1 kW h according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 40671056), the Pilot Project of Innovation Engineering Projects in the Third Period of IGSNRR (Grant Nos. 066U0401SZ and 200904003), and the Key Knowledge Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KZCX2-YW-325-5).
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Li, H., Wang, L. & Shen, L. Potential CO2 Emission Reduction by Development of Non-Grain-Based Bioethanol in China. Environmental Management 46, 555–564 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-009-9418-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-009-9418-1