Integrated Renewable Biomass Energy Development Project

Project Objective: The proposed ADB Project (the Baseline Project) to be implemented in 5 provinces in the People's Republic of China (PRC) will provide support to achieve local and global benefits through introducing new renewable energy sources in rural areas at selected project sites. The GEF financing will generate additional global environmental benefits by providing about 50% of the additional investment costs required to enable agro-enterprises to supply power generated from agricultural wastes to the electricity grid and/or to upgrade their facilities to establish centralized or co-fermentation medium to large-scale biogas plants (MLBGPs). The objective of the Project is to develop a market environment for MLBGPs as a basis for biomass energy development. This will reduce water and land pollution as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while ensuring an integrated approach to ecological farming practices ('eco-farming') to realize a sustainable production system and improvement of rural livelihoods. The overall benefits of the Project include: (i) replacement of fossil fuel as the main energy source by renewable biomass energy in rural areas to help achieve a low-carbon and locally self-sufficient economy; (ii) reduction of the adverse impacts of the country’s economic growth on GHG emissions by collecting and using methane gas generated from animal biomass wastes of livestock farms and agro-product processing plants; and (iii) enhanced sustainability by developing eco-farming systems. The MLBGPs will introduce anaerobic digesters (AD) and establish facilities for the production of biogas, electricity, and/or heat (cogeneration), depending on the identified needs.

GEF financing will (i) support 25 large agro-enterprises to remove technical, policy, regulatory and institutional barriers facing them to provide renewable power to the grid; (ii) reduce GHG emissions and land and water pollution by up-scaling about 10 MLBGPs for co-fermentation or centralized biogas digester systems whereby smaller farms without biogas digesters can benefit from economies of scale and have their waste treated and biogas residues utilized as organic fertilizers; (iii) address institutional, administrative and technical barriers that are preventing other MLBGPs from connecting to the grid; (iv) establish business models and technical guidelines that will demonstrate for other agro-enterprises how to convert their facilities and replicate project benefits; and (v) evaluate project experience to extract lessons that can be further applied to other MLBGP projects.