The mainland is addicted to coal - the black stuff accounts for some 70 per cent of the nation's primary energy consumption and is contributing to worsening smog and acid rain. No wonder Beijing is stepping up efforts to develop clean alternative energy and has a target for renewable energy to account for 16 per cent of consumption by 2020, up from 6 per cent last year.
Of the different non-fossil energy alternatives - hydro, nuclear, wind, solar and biofuel - biofuel is among the least developed but it has enormous potential.
While the adoption of biofuel will help clear increasingly smog-filled skies, questions remain over whether a developing country with more than a billion people to feed can afford to devote so much of its natural resources to such an endeavour.
There are also concerns about whether production of cleaner fuels can be profitable given fuel price controls and insufficient taxation and regulatory support.
The country's theoretical biofuel resources are enormous.
According to Tsinghua University chemical engineering professor Jin Yong, the country has the potential to produce fuel from biomass almost equivalent to the annual output of its largest oil field in Daqing, in the northeast.
'This will necessitate the construction of 1,000 biofuel factories to create annually, fuel equivalent to 50 million tonnes of crude oil,' he said. This amounts to about 14 per cent of the nation's oil consumption last year.
