It was exciting to be mentioned in this article by Kandy Wong in the South China Morning Post (and sorry it is a locked site).

The premise of the article is that as much as cellulosic fuel would like to develop in China, it’s going to be a heck of a challenge because farms are so small, and there are so many stakeholders to deal with in collecting biomass for both bioelectricity and cellulosic ethanol.

Before Cofco could put its new plant on the right track, it must solve the collection problem, said William Kao, chief executive of Pro-Tek (Xiamen) Electroplating Development.

“There are just too many farmers owning plots that are too small, which means it is difficult to manage by machinery,” he said. “If much of the collection of biomass is done by hand, there is increasing handling and labour costs.

“The solution would be collective farming,” Kao said. “Put the lands together and form large uniform plots of over 1,000 mu, and work by machine.”

But collectivisation would not only be costly but also highly disruptive to family farmers, especially given the mainland’s bitter experience with forced collectivisation during the Great Leap Forward, which resulted in mass starvation.

In addition to the difficulty of collecting agricultural waste from so many small farms, there is competition for the material.

“Agricultural waste can be used by farmers for fertilising lands through burning,” said Robert Earley, the low-carbon transport programme manager for the American non-profit organisation, Innovation Centre for Energy and Transportation. “Besides, the raw material is often used to generate bioelectricity.”

Moreover, if Cofco’s plant was located too close to bioelectricity generators, there would be direct competition for sourcing raw materials, Earley said.

Before Cofco can efficiently collect enough agricultural waste, its first task must be to unite the farmers behind its project.

The company is still seeking advice from experts for the collection problem.

According to Novozymes, there are some big biomass collectors such as Shandong’s Dragon Power doing the job, and Cofco may have to co-operate with these firms to gain a steady supply.

Let’s hope that they can figure out some way to get that biomass collected.  Transporting biomass long distances to cellulosic ethanol plants doesn’t work from a lifecycle GHG emission perspective or an economic perspective — so the best case scenario for this kind of development is:  local feedstock, local production (and ideally…) local use.

iCET is currently working with Novozymes on a study to compare the relative benefits and drawbacks of different uses of cellulose material, including biomass electricity and cellulosic ethanol.  In many ways, biomass electricity is turning out to be a winning technology, but the fact is that vehicles in China still need liquid fuel to burn, and cellulosic ethanol is one of the best choices.  Results will be coming soon…

“Harper is the last leader of the Group of Eight to visit China, and Chinese leaders have barely visited Canada since Harper took office,” said Jin Canrong, vice dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China.

In a fit of excitement, the Chinese government has dropped the pork ban on Canadian pork that has been in place since the word “Swine” was attached to the word “Flu” that somehow showed up on an Albertan farm.  Now that everybody’s got H1N1, I guess the ban just doesn’t seem so important now.  Or maybe it’s the warming relations.  Regardless, I guess the Prime Minister is probably licking his lips at the thought of a nice Canadian pork chop or – even better – some Canadian yu xiang rou si.  I sure am.

And what do we hope to accomplish?

Well, as the Toronto Star astutely points out, “Harper is no visionary Pierre Trudeau, or Jean Chrétien Team Canada deal-seeker.”  That’s not big news.  The interesting bit is that:

Canadian officials are working overtime to keep expectations in check. It’s all about “building relationships and strengthening ties” as Canada prepares to chair the Group of Eight next year, host the G-20, and mark 40 years of diplomatic relations with China.

Well, let’s see what happens.  It seems that China is willing to give everybody a chance, even guys like Stephen Harper who have hugged the DL and seem to enjoy poking China in the eye about human rights.  So, let’s see if Harper has gotten the message and does actually manage to open up a new phase of warm and happy feelings between China and Canada.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/2009-11/26/content_9058050.htm

BEIJING: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will attend the climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, next month.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang made the announcement on Thursday at a regular press conference.

How will other world leaders (especially political ones) view this?

Or maybe the next story we’ll here is that Hu Jintao will attend?  After all, China has just announced it’s 40-45% reduction in energy intensity by 2020 targets.

Anyway, even if Stephen Harper comes, what will he bring with him?  Here’s Canada’s position on the Environment Canada website.

Update: China Daily reports today that Premier Wen Jiabao will attend the Copenhagen talks

Four streams:

1. Biofuels
   1. Forest-based products
   2. grassland conversion and land use change
   3. second generation biofuels and policy implications
2. low carbon fuel standards
   1. how to incorporate the ecological risks of low carbon fuel standards into effective climate change mitigation policy?  Is this problem solvable?
3. Registries
   1. What are the practical issues for registries in developing countries?  How do you deal with incomplete data, and what level of precision is needed?
   2. Why should organizations in developing countries join registries?  What’s the benefit and what are the drawbacks?
4. Arctic peoples
   1. What role do arctic peoples have in defining their own vutures?  How will their cultures help them to adapt?  What innovative strategies or tactics are emerging in these places tha could be mimicked in the south?
   2. What are the major changes going on in the arctic?  What can science tell us, and what is traditional knowledge telling us?  Does the difference matter?
   We’ll start posting introductions to these topics over the next few days leading up to the conference, and post regularly as they are discussed throughout the event, Dec 7-19.

At the height of this ridiculous blockage in China, I couldn’t access Canada’s website in Beijing: I tried on my own computer and my office computer, took my Ipod Touch and laptop to various locations around the city, and had the same result of other blocked sites.   I even tried to get there using the GPRS internet on my mobile phone.  No luck.  I had spoken to a journalist in Beijing, and for some reason he could go to canada.gc.ca, but others I asked to test for me couldn’t.  Really bizzare.

Anyway, I’m glad that the site is back, there is some information I need on there.  But the more disturbing question is: why was a national website allowed to be blocked in China?  If it’s a snub, I’d like to know why… if it was just carelessness on China’s part, well…I think Canada needs to reevaluate (again) it’s position in China.  If it was carelessness, Canada’s profile is clearly still not high enough to warrant being on a “White list” with China’s censors.

Canada has the ability to be a leader in so many ways with respect to global issues, if it has the desire.  But if our national website is blocked to 1/5 of the world’s population in China, it’s going to be very hard to do anything at all.

September 21, 2009's airforce flyby rehearsal

In fact, last Friday night, everyone with an office along Chang An Jie was kicked out around 3 p.m.  in preparation for the 60th Anniversary of the PRC parade rehearsal.  I stayed late…but on my way home, geez, I saw it all…tanks, armoured carriers, missile launchers, missiles, every kind of artillery you can imagine… oh it’s going to be a heck of a show on October 1.    And if the weather stays the way it is today…what a grand tribute it is going to be to 60 years of the PRC.  Too bad I won’t be here!

We’re looking forward to more rehearsals!

Now, if only we could get the Canadian government website working again in China…..

Furthermore, the website has been blocked for a couple of days, at least…and it’s still not fixed.  The people I contacted at the embassy didn’t seem to know much about it, but maybe I contacted the wrong people, so I won’t blame them.

What’s going on on canada.gc.ca?

The Alberta government is trying desperately to make sure that oil sands oil doesn’t get blocked from the US market when new fuel policies come into effect.  As it stands, oil from Alberta’s oil sands will likely be blocked from California under the world-leading Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

In its efforts, the Government of Alberta commissioned two studies (TIAX – Executive Summary and Full Study -  and Jacobs - Executive Summary and Full Study) to analyse the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with various types of crude oil – including crude processed from Canadian oil sands.  They found that some oil sands oil has lifecycle emissions comparable to some conventional crude oil (although most oil sands results turned out to be considerably higher than most conventional crude oils).  The attached image, from the Jacobs consultancy report, summarizes the findings.  Note that 70 gCO2e/MJ gasoline, which make up the bulk of the emissions, are embodied in the actual fuel.  The variation seen in this image is attributed to different production life cycles.  “Thermal” and “mining” refer to different development styles for oil sands in Canada.

Now, these reports have come under considerable criticism from organizations who don’t want to see oil sands / tar sands oil flowing into the US anymore, such as the Natural Resource Defence Council’s blog on the issue.  Honestly, this isn’t the interesting discussion for me.

The interesting thing for me is that different conventional crude oils have different lifecycle GHG emissions, possibly differing up to 10%, such as in the case between Arab Medium and Bonny Light, as illustrated above.

This means that any transport sector GHG emission analyses that assume one value for crude oil WTW emissions might be off by several percentage points, depending on the difference between the assumed weighted average of crude oil LCA GHG emissions, and the actual weighted average.

I like advanced biofuels as a means of reducing lifecycle GHG emissions in the transport sector, but if significant emission reductions can be achieved by simply shifting sources of crude oil from one supplier to another, this is also an important consideration to make, given that advanced biofuel technology is not quite commercialized yet.

It would be incumbent on China energy analysts to understand the relative sources of crude oil to China, and to undertake LCAs on each of those sources so as to minimize GHG emissions from the transport sector during this time of transition to alternative sources of energy.  Similarly, analyses on different sources of coal should be undertaken in order to accomplish the same lower carbon shifting of conventional energy sources.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Sinocanadian

Thanks!