Development Status, Problems and Countermeasures of Large- and
Intermediate-Scale Biogas Projects in Beijing’s Mountainous Counties
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JPEE
3. Main Problems
In general, Biogas projects in Beijing mountainous sub-
urb have made remarkable achievements. But there is
still a large gap between operation status and Beijing’s
future ecological construction goal. The main problems
are as follows:
3.1. High Operating Cost, Poor Project
Profitability
At first, the biogas projects of Beijing mountainous coun-
ties were oriented to welfare management, so the gas
charges are commonly low, about 1 to 2.1 Yuan/m3,
equals to 1/3 to 2/3 the same amount of liquefied petro-
leum gas (LPG) expenditure. However, projects’ fixed
investment was higher for the first stage, and the overall
running cost would be much higher if costs like raw ma-
terial, management, maintenance and heating in the win-
ter are included. With current charging standards, most
of the projects cannot self-operate. Only when the gov-
ernment invests special funds of management and the
village collective money, the projects can keep running
smoothly. It means that some projects in economically-
weak areas cannot be operated nor mally.
3.2. Lack of Long-Term Plan, Part of the
Engineering Material Cannot Be
Guaranteed
At first, construction site must have enough raw mate-
rials of animal manure in biogas engineering. Actually,
there are many other problems existing in the course of
implementing, such as lacking of consideration on at-
mosphere and water resources protection. In the mean-
while, the adjustment of urban-rural development may
limit livestock breeding, or the livestock farms are re-
quired to move. As a result, some materials of projects
cannot be obtained right on the spot, running cost are
increased because of external purchase.
3.3. By-Products Are Not Efficiently Uti lized,
Influence Comprehensive Benefits
One of the most important purposes of developing biogas
projects is to solve organic waste pollution and produce
high quality organic fertilizer. But nowadays, most of
biogas residue and slurry in Beijing suburb are left un-
used or abandoned. For this reason, biogas manures didn’t
exert their values. In addition, some of them are partially
aggregated or overused that exceed environment capacity,
results in secondary pollution. Therefore, the biogas ma-
nures did not reflect their green economic benefits, so
that the comprehensive profits of biogas projects are in-
fluenced.
3.4. Lack of Policies Support, High Pressure on
Engineering Management and Maintenance
Since the biogas engineering serves agriculture, rural areas,
and farmers, it has some public goods properties, like
strong externalities. However, it only takes the form of
government purchase for demonstration and promotion
in earlier stage; after that, the actual op erations didn’t get
the government subsidies, so that it brings about high
pressures on engineering management and maintenance.
At present, supporting policies about biogas engineering
development are limited, particularly special policies. For
example, in 2011, municipal government had established
“Beijing Municipal Peoples Government’s advice on
strengthening rural infrastructure maintenance and man-
agement”, but biogas engineering management and main-
tenance funds of some counties are not guaranteed in
place.
4. Countermeasures and Proposals
4.1. Strengthening Technical Innovation, Setting
Norms and Standards
The government should strengthen technical innovation;
focus on increasing unit volume gas production rate, es-
pecially low temperature fermentation problem solving.
Improve operation stability, reliability, and automation
level of biogas equipment. Consolidate technical support
system of biogas project development of Beijing. For-
mulate different technology processes, routes and plans
for large- and intermediate-scale biogas projects. Setting
norms and standards for engineering in Beijing, standar-
dizing stereotypes applied to related and associated equip-
ment. Promote the standardization of engineering con-
struction.
4.2. Innovating Development Patterns, Planning
Reasonable Layout
Biogas engineering has minimum scale of economic op-
eration. I t’s not econ omical if the proje ct scale is to o large
for the resource capacity, because it not only leads to
more resources idled and wasted, but also increases the
unit cost of investment. The biogas engineering should
be integrated with cycle agricultural development, pro-
duce high added-value of biogas manure, improve the
overall economic performance, and strengthen the engi-
neering’s self-operation capacity. On the present basis of
biogas projects, we should innovate development patterns,
implement intensively scale development. The projects
should supply gas to big central villages, or combined
villages that adjacent. Meanwhile, on the new biogas
projects layout, we should take the requirement of cities
and towns development planning and ecological envi-