Japan to test rice ethanol production using idle lands unsuitable for other food crops

In Japan, a change in Japanese diets has created an overstock of rice, and rice ethanol project has been proposed to use land idled by oversupply. Japanese price supports have prevented its rice from finding an export market although they have preserved the traditional small-farm cultivation of rice. Researchers at the University of Tokyo say that idle land reserved for rice cultivation could be tapped to produce up to 264 Mgy of rice ethanol; attempts to grow other food crops in the idle land has failed due to the wet conditions which are suitable for rice but not other staple foods.

Japan background

Oenon Holdings will construct a 14 Mgy rice ethanol plant in Hokkaido. The company has awarded contracts to Tsukishima Kikai and Marubeni and will commence operations in April 2009. The plant will have an initial capacity of 1.3 Mgy. Half of the $40 million project cost will be supplied by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

In Japan, the central government has outlined a five-year plant to invest in technologies to convert wood waste into ethanol. The Ministry of Agriculture said that it had earmarked $11.2 million in next year’s budget for research.

As Japan struggles to bring a biofuels industry to life, a 0.2 Mgy rice ethanol plant in Nigata, the country’s first ethanol facility, was recently delayed until March 2009. The Japanese government is paying half of the $15 million construction cost for the facility, which will be managed by the National Federation of Agriculture Co-operative Associations (Zen-Noh). The plant will use non-food rice.

Another rice ethanol project underway in Japan is the 14 Mgy Oenon Holdings plant in Hokkaido. The company has awarded contracts to Tsukishima Kikai and Marubeni and will commence operations in April 2009. The plant will have an initial capacity of 1.3 Mgy. Half of the $40 million project cost will be supplied by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

In August, Mitsubishi announced plans for 500 million gallons in ethanol production capacity by 2017 as Japan ramps up on its biofuels conversion. Also, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced a goal of producing ethanol from silver grass at a cost of 40 yen per liter. Current Japanese technologies produce ethanol from celluosic biomass at a cost of 2,000 yen per liter.
Meanwhile, the national government has recently abandoned its plan to establish Miyakojima as a “biofuel island” in Okinawa Prefecture. The decision resulted from the lack of support by the oil industry for the government’s proposed E3 mandate.

The oil industry had proposed the use of ETBE, a fuel additive created from ethanol and isobutylene, which oil companies say has superior performance capabilities include a higher octane rating and less absorption of water. The original plan called for production of sugarcane ethanol, which would be distributed at 19 gasoline stations on the island in an E3 blend.

The Japanese government had set a goal of replacing 0.6 percent of gasoline fuel with biofuels by 2010. The E3 ethanol mandate recently led to the introduction of two pumps in Osaka as Japan finally begins to rollout its biofuels mandate. To reach this goal, the government has formed a council of government units, universities and companies including Nippon Oil and Toyota to develop for reducing the cost of ethanol production.

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