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In order to achieve the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutralization, we must vigorously develop renewable energy. As one of the important renewable energy sources, the development and utilization of biomass energy has a high cost, and it is difficult to compete with traditional fossil energy in the early stage of development. Therefore, it is necessary for the government to escort the development of the biomass energy industry through legal means. First of all, on the basis of fully analyzing the development prospects of China's biomass energy, the article sorts out the laws and regulations related to biomass energy in China, and finds the shortcomings. Secondly, this paper draws on the institutional experience of the United States, Brazil, Sweden and other countries with relatively developed biomass energy industry, and provides suggestions for improvement from three aspects: law, policy and administrative system, with a view to supporting China's development of biomass energy industry and realizing the "dual carbon target" theoretically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a major technical route to utilize biomass energy, biomass combustion power generation (BCPG) has been shown to be of environmental and economic significance. According to the operating experience, the installed capacity has a decisive impact on the operation and economic return of BCPG projects. In China, an installed capacity of either 30 MW or 12 MW is often chosen for constructing a BCPG project. To explore which one is more suitable for China, this paper uses actual operating data to compare the operation performance and techno-economics of two representative BCPG projects with an installed capacity of 30 MW and 12 MW. The results show that the operation situation and electricity production of the 30 MW project are better than those of the 12 MW project. The 30 MW project has a lower biomass consumption than the 12 MW project to produce per unit of electricity. The Internal Rate of Return (IRR) of the 30 MW project is greater than the industry benchmark in China and is almost three times the IRR of the 12 MW project. Therefore, it is recommended to construct BCPG projects with installed capacity of 30 MW in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid progress of socio-economic development and urbanization in China, a wide variety of literature has focused on the phenomenon of energy-consumption disparity, which in turn could be related to numerous fundamental energy dilemmas that China must deal with now or soon, including energy use inefficiency, regional energy shortage, insufficient use of green energy, etc. However, in most cases, only a tendency scenario is discussed, while identifying which factors are more likely to affect the improvement of energy supply/use has not yet been fully explored. Therefore, this paper attempts to explore differences in energy consumption in specific, household-level aspects. Based on the information provided by Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS2015), the Gini coefficient and the Lorentz asymmetry coefficient are used to measure the difference among various categories of energy type and end use within and between different geographical sub-groups. The findings show that: (1) household energy-consumption behaviors exhibit a complicated effect on the overall level of energy-consumption difference; (2) from the supply side, energy users show the most significant difference in biomass energy consumption, while from the demand side, the contribution of space heating to the difference in total energy consumption is the highest; (3) a great urban–rural difference in energy consumption is generally observed with its difference within rural areas being much greater than in urban areas; (4) the eastern, middle and western regions weight differently in explaining the overall difference of energy consumption. These findings provide meaningful materials and references for policymakers in China to understand the overall situation of individual energy consumption to a great extent, and to locate key points to reform the current energy policy framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biomass gasification to produce burnable gas now attracts an increasing interest for production flexibility in the renewable energy system. However, the biomass gasification technology using dual fluidized bed which is most suitable for burnable gas production still encounters problems of low production efficiency and high production cost. Here, we proposed a large-scale biomass gasification system to combine dual fluidized bed and high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR) for co-production of hydrogen and synthetic natural gas (SNG). The design of high-temperature gas-cooled reactor biomass gasification (HTR-BiGas) consists of one steam supply module to heat inlet steam of the gasifier by HTR and ten biomass gasification modules to co-produce 2000 MWth hydrogen and SNG by gasifying the unpretreated biomass. Software for calculating the mass and energy balances of biomass gasification was developed and validated by the experiment results on the Gothenburg biomass gasification plant. The preliminary economic evaluation showed that HTR-BiGas and the other two designs, electric auxiliary heating and increasing recirculated product gas, are economically comparative with present mainstream production techniques and the imported natural gas in China. HTR-BiGas is the best, with production costs of hydrogen and SNG around 1.6 $/kg and 0.43 $/Nm3, respectively. These designs mainly benefit from proper production efficiencies with low fuel-related costs. Compared with HTR-BiGas, electric auxiliary heating is hurt by the higher electric charge and the shortcoming of increasing recirculated product gas is its lower total production. Future works to improve the efficiency and economy of HTR-BiGas and to construct related facilities are introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]