1 Intelligent Well Technology: Status and Opportunities for Developing Marginal Reserves SPE

IMPROVING CHINA’S SMALL SCALE RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM

Willem van Groenendaal, TilburgUniversity, Phone +31 13 4662423, E-mail

Overview

Over the years China has invested in the development of renewable energy technologies (RET) for rural areas. Well known are the family size bio-digesters and small windmills. These technologies should contribute to several of the goals the Chinese government has formulated for its rural areas, most importantly: secure energy supply, improving the (local and global) environment, and poverty alleviation. From an engineering point of view the technologies seem to support these goals. However, sound empirical support that these benefits are actually achieved is missing. In this contribution the results of a Sino-Dutch cooperative project are used to critically evaluate the contributions of several technologies to the goals set. It is concluded that the current dissemination policy for these technologies insufficiently supports the needs of the households to integrate these technologies adequately in the farm economy. As a result heir contributions to the goals set are much less than previously assumed.

Methods

Household surveys in three villages on the effects and use of family size bio-digesters, and case study research of windmills on Hong Hu lake.

Results

From the empirical analysis it can be concluded that the benefits of the household bio-digester in terms of emission reduction and poverty alleviation are much less than normally assumed. Furthermore, for a household the bio-digester in combination with the new-kitchen, the pigpen and the toilet seems to be an investment in convenience rather than in poverty alleviation. This conclusion is supported by several other observations. First, the farms are very small, so cash income from farming is limited, as are the possibilities for improvement. Second, the villages that are active in bio-digester projects are generally the villages that are “better off”, not the really poor. With some income from non-farm activities, the own contribution can be afforded. These observations are supported by a limited number of interviews conducted during the field visits.

Furthermore, since there are no differences in the use of commercial fertilizers and pesticides the products produced do not have a higher market value as biologically grown products, as is sometimes claimed.

Finally, the bio-digesters doe not always produce enough gas, as has been shown on several occasions. They do, however, sometimes produce too much gas. When asked, farmers state that they then often release the gas into the environment, contributing to GHG emissions. Since methane is highly polluting this aspect needs further investigation.

The results for the windmills are less clear since no statistically sound empirical data are available, only a limited amount of case studies.

Conclusions

This research shows that the benefits of the bio-digester program as stated in the literature are not supported empirically. The bio-digester does not contribute to poverty alleviation or to savings in fuel use. It does have local and indoor environmental benefits, but the regional and global environmental benefits are not significant. This seems to be due to insufficient transfer of knowledge on how to realize the various benefits. The households regard the bio-digester as an investment in convenience, and not as an investment in production. To fully realize the benefits of this technology, better and longer-term customer support is needed.

The windmills on Hong Hu Lake are used to charge batteries used for lighting, TV’s and stereo equipment. These are convenience goods that do not contribute to poverty alleviation.

Insufficient differentiation among rural households in policy formulation makes the policies less effective and blurs the policy goals. Given the fact that projects want to be successful in the sense that they cover many households, means lesser attention is paid to the poorer households that need the support the most. Therefore a differentiation of rural households is proposed according to their ability to pay for the RET, this in order to be able to implement more effective RET policies, based on a mix of financial (subsidies, micro finance) and non-financial policy instruments (improved rural energy offices (REO), better management, etc.).

Furthermore, the need to privatize the bio-digester supply chain calls for a change in the role of the REO also. Now subsidies are mostly granted through REO led investment projects. This type of subsidy should be replaced by a more generic approach, with a different policy for each target group. The role of the REO becomes one of infrastructure facilitator for the retail process, rather than being a project initiator. The REO can than also focus more on the really poor, which need its support the most. In a for-profit orientation of the supply chain, the role of the other stakeholders changes too. This research has shown that these stakeholders (producers, technicians, local retailers) may be reluctant to do so, because they now they deal with the REO and supply larger quantities, or get larger assignments, whereas in a more privatized supply chain this will change. This will, of course, only work if the local market is large enough.

References

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