Chinese Ethanol

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The Practical Chinese

In the manufacture of bio-ethanol China may entirely switch away from food crops to non-food materials like cassva, sorgo and cellulose, according to government sources. The country would approve no projects designed to produce ethanol fuel with food from now on. Food-based ethanol fuel will not be for China.

China has been trying to avoid the use of arable land, or the utilization of large amounts of grain in developing its renewable energies. The current four enterprises engaged in producing corn-based ethanol will be asked to switch to non-food materials.

The four companies have a combined production capacity of 1.02 million tons of corn-based ethanol per year. The country has become a big producer and consumer of ethanol fuel in the world after the United States, Brazil and European Union.

China is also working on reducing the production costs of ethanol. I wonder if they will beat Brazil in reducing costs?



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