Jilin Province, home to just 2 per cent of China’s population, produces 14 per cent of its corn. The corn stalks currently pose a waste problem, but could become a valuable local resource to reduce poverty and support sustainable development. Clean, low-cost heat and power, based on such biomass, could increase living standards, promote industry and create jobs here and in rural areas throughout developing countries – while cutting dangerous indoor air pollution from traditional cooking stoves and combating global warming.

Expanding operations
Biomass has already successfully been turned into gas in Jilin and other Chinese provinces to provide a clean cooking fuel for rural villages, but these projects have not been economically attractive because they generally only operate for about six hours every day, which is not sufficient to recover the capital cost. The Hechengli project will expand the plant incrementally to meet the village’s needs for electricity and heat – in an area where annual temperatures average just 2.5°C – and sell surplus power to the national grid. The added revenues from the expanded operation of the plant will make it economically attractive.

People are optimistic about being at the cutting edge of energy technology, expecting more energy for less labour, expanding industry and ecotourism, and reducing pollution

Furthermore, the people of the village believe it will also help them expand their industry by providing process heat for factories in summer and by heating greenhouses for growing vegetables in winter. Use of the gas instead of traditional cooking fuels (wood and coal) will greatly reduce the high levels of indoor air pollution that cause acute respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, tuberculosis, asthma and blindness across the developing world.

Environmentally sensitive
Jilin Province is an ideal place for the project because it has not just abundant biomass and a need for rural development, but an emerging industrial base and a government with the commitment needed to ensure the sustained growth of such a new industry. Hechengli, as an Ecological Village, already has an environmentally sensitive development plan, and is well placed to use extra energy to promote non-polluting industry and expand the greenhouse production which already provides income for over half its households.