China to expand biomass project portfolio

China plans to expand its installed generation capacity of biomass power to 13 million kilowatts by the end of 2015, China Business News reported on Monday.

The figure doubled the former goal proposed by the China Electricity Council, and is even higher than the planned installed capacity of solar power, which will grow to 10 million kilowatts by the end of the

12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), according to Liu Tienan, the head of the National Energy Administration, who made these remarks at the national rural energy conference.

China's present installed capacity for biomass power, of which marsh gas generation and garbage incineration are project examples, is about 5.5 million kilowatts. Wu Youqing, a professor with the East China University of Science and Technology, said at the conference that China should produce 5 billion tons of biomass power every year theoretically, which equals 10 percent of the country's total coal production.

The on-grid price of biomass power is now set at 0.75 yuan ($0.12) per kilowatt-hour. Analysts said that biomass power stations may make profits due to recently released policies.