Cotton stalks to generate power

Cotton stalks that farmers once burned as agricultural waste will fuel CLP's latest environmentally friendly power project in northern China and cut harmful carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide emissions at the same time.

The Hong Kong power provider is building the cotton-stalk fired power plant in Binzhou, Boxing county, Shandong province .

It is to generate 6,000 kilowatt-hour (kWh) and operations will begin next year.

CLP owns 79 per cent of the joint venture company CLP Huanyu (Shandong) Biomass Heat and Power Company.

Shandong Boxing Huanyu Paper Company owns 21 per cent of the firm.

The power plant will collect the cotton stalks, which are agricultural waste, from the farms in the region.

Chan Ka-keung, CLP's managing director of renewables, said the plant will generate electricity for the provincial grid.

"Scientific studies show the heat energy generated from burning 1.7 tonnes of cotton stalk is equal to one tonne of coal," said Dr Chan, who added the project was in line with national policy on developing renewable energy.

In 2005 China passed a renewable energy law in order to boost the use of such energy capacity up to 10 per cent by 2020.

In 2003 China's renewable energy consumption accounted for only 3 per cent of its total energy consumption.

Local farmers and residents are expected to benefit environmentally and financially from the new power plant.

"It will cut up to 117,429 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year," said Qu Xudong, general manager of the joint venture company.

The emission of sulphur dioxide would also be cut by up to 496 per cent per year, he said, without providing any emissions figures.

Local farmers would be able to earn extra income by selling cotton stalks to the power plant.

Mr Qu said the farmers, who used to burn the cotton stalks as waste, could earn about 230 yuan per tonne, which would work out to roughly 5 per cent of a farmers' annual income.

Mr Qu said each tonne of coal cost about 600 yuan. "We burn roughly two tonnes of cotton stalk to generate the energy equivalent to one tonne of coal," he said.

"The rate of return is quite good. More importantly, both the local farmers and the power benefit from the project."

The project is CLP's eighth renewable energy project in Shandong province. The other seven are the wind farm projects in Changdao, Weihai.