In northern Beijing's Yanqing district, a new power plant is under construction at Deqingyuan chicken farm. Instead of using conventional fuel such as coal, it uses biogas created from chicken manure to generate power and heat.

Equipped with the US industrial conglomerate GE's Jenbacher gas engines, the project can produce 14,600 MWh of electricity per year. By using the biogas for power generation instead of coal-fired power, the plant is expected to reduce the equivalent of about 95,000 tons of CO2 per year.

The project can also reduce the farm's dust levels and further enhances the area's air and water quality. The Deqingyuan farm now owns 3 million chickens, producing 220 tons of manure and 170 tons of wastewater each day.

"This biogas project will quickly pay for itself by meeting Deqingyuan's demand for cost-effective electricity and heat," says Jack Wen, president and CEO of GE Energy China. "We estimate that the customer will save more than US$1.2 million a year in electricity costs alone."

The company expects it will become a demonstration project for its gas engines business in China, which would help GE to further increase presence in the field.

As China now encourages the use of more clean and renewable energy, GE is making an effort to boost its business in the sector. In October GE announced the opening of a new regional engine packaging operation for its Jenbacher gas engine business in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province. The move will help support GE Energy's customers in China and Asia that are working to address their urgent energy and environmental challenges.

Products made in the Hangzhou site operate on either natural gas or a variety of specialty fuels, including coalmine gas, landfill gas, biogas, wood gas, sewage gas and industrial waste gas.

In addition to serving customers in China, the Hangzhou site will be in a position to supply customized solutions to Asian growth countries including South Korea, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, GE says.

The Hangzhou site is GE's second regional engine assembly operation to open since GE acquired the Jenbacher gas engine business in May 2003. GE also operates a facility in Hungary, which packages containerized Jenbacher systems.

"Having reached a critical volume of gas engine orders in Asia, we recognized a priority to locate a new packaging facility in China to help assure prompt equipment delivery and tailored customer service for projects throughout Asia," says Prady Iyyanki, CEO of GE Energy's Jenbacher gas engine business. "Future business prospects look extremely promising for this region."

China's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10) emphasizes that it is important to build a resource-efficient and eco-friendly society. The country has set a goal of reducing emissions of major pollutants by 10 percent during the five-year period.

To boost the use of clean energy, the country's top economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), has drafted a five-year plan for the development of coalbed methane, a gas that is previously regarded as useless and dangerous. Under the blueprint, China is to increase its annual coalbed methane output to 10 billion cu m in 2010.

Under the second Sino-US Strategic Economic Dialogue, the two countries agreed to develop up to 15 large-scale coalmine methane capture and utilization projects in China in the next five years.

This prevalence of using more clean energy has provided a lot of opportunities for foreign companies. For example, Caterpillar, the US construction and mining equipment manufacturer has supplied 60 gas generator sets to Sihe coal mine in Jincheng city in Shanxi province, to burn coal methane to generate electricity.

The project has a capacity of 120 MW, which is the largest of its kind in the world. It will provide a new source of electricity generated from a fuel source that was once considered a waste product.

Following the success of this project, Caterpillar was selected to provide an additional 31 methane gas-powered generator sets to two other coal mines in Shanxi. "These projects are major steps forward in China's road to sustainable development and demonstrates the benefits of positive bilateral trade relations between the US and China," says Rich Lavin, Caterpillar group president with responsibility for Asia.

(China Daily November 3, 2008)