Waste oil derived biofuels in China bring brightness for global GHG mitigation Sai Liang a,⇑ , Zhu Liu b,c,⇑ , Ming Xu d,e , Tianzhu Zhang a a School of Environment, State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China b Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China c University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China d School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1041, United States e Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2125, United States highlights " Waste oil derived biofuels bring brightness for global GHG mitigation. " GHG mitigation potential counted 28.8% and 14.7% of Annex B countries’ efforts. " Waste oil derived biofuel was an effective way to deal with aviation carbon tax. " Supporting measures were discussed to solve bottlenecks. article info Article history: Received 2 September 2012 Received in revised form 29 November 2012 Accepted 1 December 2012 Available online 12 December 2012 Keywords: Biodiesel Biofuels China Greenhouse gas Waste oil abstract This study proposed a novel way for global greenhouse gas reduction through reusing China’s waste oil to produce biofuels. Life cycle greenhouse gas mitigation potential of aviation bio-kerosene and biodiesel derived from China’s waste oil in 2010 was equivalent to approximately 28.8% and 14.7% of mitigation achievements on fossil-based CO 2 emissions by Annex B countries of the Kyoto Protocol in the period of 1990–2008, respectively. China’s potential of producing biodiesel from waste oil in 2010 was equiva- lent to approximately 7.4% of China’s fossil-based diesel usage in terms of energy. Potential of aviation bio-kerosene derived from waste oil could provide about 43.5% of China’s aviation fuel demand in terms of energy. Sectors key to waste oil generation are identified from both production and consumption per- spectives. Measures such as technology innovation, government supervision for waste oil collection and financial subsidies should be introduced to solve bottlenecks. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction China has been promoting the development of renewable en- ergy since 2006. China first implemented the Renewable Energy Law in 2006, followed by the Medium and Long Term Renewable Energy Development Plan in 2007. In addition, China made the Eleventh and Twelfth Five-Year Plans for developing renewable en- ergy sources in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Liquid biofuels are important components in these legal initiatives to promote renew- able energy. Recently, China has published standards for biodiesel fuel blend in 2010 and technical requirements for biodiesel evalu- ation in 2011. China is now experiencing a painful crisis of domestic food security. In addition to poisonous infant milk and dirty food production chains, illegal use of gutter oil has become another pressing issue threatening the health of Chinese consumers (Ramzy, 2011). Mostly illegally used for edible oil or animal feed- ing, gutter oil is often refined from leftover cooking oil that is either dredged from sewers or directly bought from restaurants. Given its food culture that heavily depends on oil for daily cooking, China generated as much as 2.73 times of gutter oil produced by Euro- pean Union, the U.S., and Canada combined (Fig. 1). TIME reported that about 10% of China’s cooking oil is from illegally used gutter oil (Ramzy, 2011) which threatens human health directly (such as causing liver cancer risk (Ramzy, 2011)) or indirectly through food supply chains (Cvengroš and Cvengrošová, 2004; Felizardo et al., 2006). SkyNRG has succeeded in producing aviation biofuels from waste cooking oil. This represents a possible way for utilising Chi- na’s gutter oil to achieve a win–win situation for both developing renewable energy and reducing illegal use of gutter oil in cooking. 0960-8524/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2012.12.008 ⇑ Corresponding authors. Tel.: +86 10 62794144; fax: +86 10 62796956. E-mail addresses: liangsai09@gmail.com (S. Liang), liuzhu@iae.ac.cn (Z. Liu). Bioresource Technology 131 (2013) 139–145 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Bioresource Technology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biortech