Change: Development Opportunities amid Crisis
New Approaches for Less-developed Regions
Adapting to climate change has accelerated the transition of the industrial city, and also brings historic opportunities to less-developed regions like Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Guangxi is an agricultural region located in the far southwest of China. The process of industrialization and urbanization that the region is going through places a huge demand on its resources, especially electricity. Short of coal, oil and gas, the region is largely dependent on its rich hydroelectricity resources. But due to overexploitation and declining water levels, hydroelectricity can no longer meet its growing demand, as evident in the red alert that the Guangxi Power Grid Corporation issued in the summers of 2011 and 2012.
The environmentally friendly concept has provided Guangxi with a new approach – that of generating power through bagasse, a by-product of sugar manufacturing. As China’s largest sugarcane base, Guangxi refines two thirds of the country’s sugar. It produced 8.6 million tons in 2012. Every refining season generates about 14 million tons of bagasse. Today, in addition to papermaking, the residual 10 million tons of bagasse are used for power generation.
All refining factories – more than 100 in the region — have set up their own power plants that produce two billion kWh every year, equivalent to around three million tons of standard coal. Biomass generation technologies help the factories get through the winter dry season and also to achieve a 28,500-ton reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions. In 2012, Guangxi allocated RMB 8 billion to upgrading the bagasse generating system. It is expected to provide 4.5 million kWh for household use in 2015.
More than 60 percent of Guangxi’s 52 million citizens live in the countryside. Not long ago, farmers would chop down trees for fuel when they ran short of power. Taking into account the region’s location in the subtropical monsoon climate zone, its consequent good light and heat and ample animal and poultry manure, the government has utilized these natural rural conditions to develop biogas digesters. Farmers raise the livestock that provide raw material for the biogas digesters, and the waste products are used as fertilizer for fruit trees and fishery.
In the last decade, the government has spent more than RMB 3 billion on constructing digesters in around 3.95 million households. About 19 million farmers have benefited from this project, and developed a dozen or more modes of methane utilization.
The methane digesters provide 1.58 billion cubic meters of high quality fuel, 98.78 million tons of high quality fertilizer, and increase farmers’ income by RMB 5.97 billion, according to Guangxi Development and Reform Commission director Huang Fangfang. They meanwhile save 7.9 million tons of timber, and decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 7.9 million tons. “Methane is one of the most important ways of solving rural poverty and energy shortage,” Huang said. “Green development protects the environment on which farmers are largely dependent, and also benefits farmers’ practical economic interests.”
