WPAC Report Co-firing in Japan Key takeaways from the IEACCC’s biomass co-firing workshop By Gordon Murray rom Feb. 25-27, I attended the IEA Clean Coal Centre (IE-ACCC)’s annual workshop on co-firing biomass with coal in Kokura, Japan. WPAC was a platinum workshop sponsor. Participants included government agencies, regulators, power utilities, biomass and equipment suppliers, consultants and ac-ademia. At the workshop, I gave a presentation called, “Demon-strating that electricity production from solid biomass is both low-carbon and sustainable.” The presentation was intended to further burnish Canada’s reputation as a reliable supplier of high-quality pellets produced from sustainably managed forests. The IEACCC is a UK-based organization organized under the auspices of the International Energy Agency, dedicated to finding ways to make coal a cleaner energy source. Members include Australia, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Poland, South Africa and the U.S. Some readers will be morally indignant about the concept of “clean coal.” However, the world still consumes seven billion tonnes of coal annually, accounting for about 40 per cent of the world’s electricity. In many countries, coal use is rising. So, as F lization and improving low-rank coal qualities. The laboratory also works on pre-treatment, saccharification and fermentation processes for cellulosic biomass. The second visit was to Chugoku Electric Power Company’s Shin Onoda Power Station in Sanyo-Onoda, Yamaguchi Prefecture. This plant consists of two 500 MW supercritical units currently burning 2.6 million tonnes per year of bituminous coal and 20,000 tonnes per year of wood chips. Chugoku plans to increase the rate of co-fir-ing to 10 per cent, using 300,000 tonnes per year of wood pellets sourced from Canada, the U.S. and Australia. This will require mod-ifications to one of the mills and alterations to the burners. POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR CANADA Globally, biomass co-firing is moving from west to east as European plants have increasingly adopted dedicated biomass firing while the majority of biomass power in Asia is presently produced from co-firing. long as coal is going to be with us, we need an organization like the IEACCC to work on ways to make coal a cleaner source of en-ergy. These include initiatives such as carbon capture and storage, high-efficiency-low-emission (HELE) technology, and biomass co-firing. To advance knowledge about biomass co-firing, IEAC-CC hosts this annual workshop, as mentioned above. SITE VISITS Day 1 of this year’s workshop included two site visits. The first was to Nippon Steel Engineering’s Kitakyushu Lab-oratory. Nippon Steel engages in research on clean coal tech-nologies such as reforming, pyrolysis, gasification, catalyst uti-The following two days of the workshop were devoted to presen-tations and papers from participants. Andrew Minchener of the IEA Clean Coal Centre gave the opening presentation. He emphasized his organization’s support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. He pointed out that the IEA Clean Coal Centre’s role is to identify and publicize the best practice in every aspect of coal production, transport, pro-cessing and utilization chain while striving to balance energy security, affordability and environment. Using biomass is an im-portant contributor in achieving this balance. Mukoto Nunokawa of Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) then discussed the Japanese government’s policy regarding the New Energy Mix. Japan’s 2030 target for coal power is 26 per cent, down from 30 per cent currently. Renewables are set to more than double from 11 per cent to 22-24 per cent, with a 3.7-4.6 per cent share for biomass. NEDO is focussed on commercializing carbon capture, storage and utilization (CCUS), as well as further developing biomass co-firing in Japan. Takanobu Aikawa of the Renewable Energy Institute in Ja-pan and a member of Japan’s ministry of economy, trade and industry’s committee working on biomass sustainability, showed that Japanese biomass power output has doubled since the intro-duction of a feed-in-tariff in 2012. In that same period, biomass imports have increased tenfold. Japan is developing biomass sus-tainability criteria and rules to govern imports. So far, the criteria look similar to those that have been adopted by European coun-tries. There will be requirements for third-party verification, in-cluding chain of custody. Canada appears to be well positioned for when Japan imposes its new rules. Aikanwa also reported that Japan is currently co-firing in 34 SPRING 2020 8 Canadian BIOMASS
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