Coupling of energy and agricultural policies on promoting the production of biomass energy from energy crops and grasses in Taiwan

This paper examined promotion programs and implementing regulations that provide a framework for the application of energy and agricultural policies for the local energy crops cultivation by the reactivation of fallow land (about 100,000 ha) and their utilizations in the bioenergy production in Taiwan. The contents were thus addressed on current energy supply and biomass energy production, estimation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy use (consumption) using the Reference Approach of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) method, national energy goal in biomass energy supply in the near future, and government policies and measures for encouraging bioenergy production and consumption. For the promotion of biofuels, the incentive programs were initiated in the period of 2006–2011. The potential benefits of the program include the upgrade of industrial investment in the bioenergy plants, the reactivation of fallow land (about 100,000 ha), the mitigation of CO2 emissions, and so on. Concerning the utilization of napier grass (a potential energy grass) as biomass energy (electricity generation) for co-firing, its impacts on ambient air quality and non-CO2 greenhouse gases (i.e., CH4 and N2O) emissions were also discussed in the paper.