The leading role of continuously increasing government policy support. This is crucial. In recent years, China has successively issued the "Renewable Energy Law," "Renewable Energy Medium and Long-term Development Plan," "Special Fund Management Measures for Renewable Energy Development," "Guiding Opinions on Compiling Comprehensive Straw Utilization Plans," and other relevant regulations and support policies. Among them, the "Guiding Opinions on Compiling Comprehensive Straw Utilization Plans" proposed: strive to establish a relatively complete system for straw returning to fields, collection, storage, and transportation nationwide by 2015, basically forming a reasonably laid out, diversified straw returning and industrialized comprehensive utilization pattern, with a comprehensive straw utilization rate exceeding 80%. All of these have provided substantial support and promotion to the biomass energy industry, including molding fuel.
Energy is increasingly scarce, urgently requiring supplementary and alternative energy sources. Experts say global fossil energy recoverable years are less than 50 years for oil, less than 60 years for natural gas, and less than 270 years for coal. The world has entered a period of energy insecurity. Early this year, preliminary accounting data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that China's total energy consumption in 2010 reached 3.25 billion tons of standard coal, an increase of 5.9% over the previous year, making China the second largest energy consumer in the world. At the same time, China faces dual pressures of economic growth and environmental protection. According to preliminary expert predictions, if GDP annual growth reaches 9% or 10%, then total energy consumption in 2015 will reach 4.2 billion or 4.41 billion tons of standard coal, making the energy security situation even more severe. Yet China's crop straw resources are very large, diverse, and widely distributed. According to estimates, China's theoretical biomass energy resources amount to about 5 billion tons of standard coal equivalent, about 4 times China's current total energy consumption. Agricultural output is 51% converted to straw, with annual production capacity of 600 million tons, about 300 million tons usable as fuel, equivalent to 150 million tons of standard coal; forestry waste annual available amount is about 900 million tons, about 300 million tons can be utilized for energy, equivalent to 200 million tons of standard coal. Other sources include energy plants like sweet sorghum, livestock manure that can be converted to biomass energy raw materials. Therefore, developing and utilizing rural biomass energy is beneficial for alleviating energy supply pressure and reducing dependence on fossil energy.
Environmental protection needs, banning straw burning urgently requires solutions. Data shows that in recent years, with rural economic development, China's crop straw output has been increasing year by year, with an average annual growth rate of 2.33%. In 2000, China's biomass energy resource volume should reach 340 million tons of standard coal. Every year over 100 million tons of straw are burned in the open, causing enormous resource waste and environmental pollution. Therefore, rational utilization of resources and accelerating high-quality conversion and utilization of straw is imperative. Looking at straw utilization in recent years, only molding fuel can achieve large-scale use and utilization of straw.
Can meet rural energy demand and optimize rural energy structure. Due to the "remote, dispersed, and far" residential characteristics of vast rural areas, centralized heating energy supply forms are not yet realistic, while molding fuel and biomass stoves feature small investment, excellent performance, high thermal efficiency, and convenient handling, able to meet farmers' growing demand for quality energy, thereby promoting optimization of rural energy structures everywhere.
Technological progress promotes industrial development. Unlike European and American countries such as Canada, Sweden, and Finland that still focus on wood pellet fuel, China has fewer trees and more straw, so the main raw material for molding fuel is straw. For molding fuel from crop straw and grass materials, due to high chlorine and potassium content, it easily causes slagging and deposit corrosion. In recent years, Chinese researchers, with their intelligence and hard work in tackling key problems, have broken through the bottleneck technical issues of slagging and deposit corrosion in biomass stoves, mastering eye-catching cutting-edge technology at one stroke, with Chinese biomass stoves recognized by the industry as world-leading level. In molding machines, through technological innovation and material innovation, significant progress has been made in wear, energy efficiency, output, and machine failure rates, achieving breakthroughs in many key technologies.
Promotion by social capital entry. The rapid development and broad prospects of molding fuel have allowed much social capital and other industry enterprises to see the business opportunities within, entering this industry one after another and continuously increasing investment. Previously overlooked small industries now, with the help of capital, have greatly promoted product technology innovation and production capacity improvement, enhanced overall industry risk resistance capability, accelerated integration of various resources, making this "cake" continuously grow larger.
