title: Performance evaluation of restaurant food waste and biowaste to biogas pilot projects in China and implications for national policy.
abstract: The objective of this research was to conduct a performance evaluation of three food waste/biowaste-to-biogas pilot projects across 7 scenarios in China based on multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methodology. The projects ranked included a food waste-biogas project in Beijing, a food waste-biogas project in Suzhou and a co-digestion project producing biomethane in Hainan. The projects were ranked from best to worst based on technical, economic and environmental criteria under the MCDA framework. The results demonstrated that some projects are encountering operational problems. Based on these findings, six national policy recommendations were provided: (1) shift away from capital investment subsidies to performance-based subsidies; (2) re-design feed in tariffs; (3) promote bio-methane and project clustering; (4) improve collection efficiency by incentivizing FW producers to direct waste to biogas projects; (5) incentivize biogas projects to produce multiple outputs; (6) incentivize food waste-based projects to co-digest food waste with other substrates for higher gas output.
authors.affiliation: State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China; Key Laboratory for Solid Waste Management and Environment Safety (Tsinghua University), Ministry of Education of China, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
authors.forename: Djavan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: De Clercq
authors.affiliation: State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China; Key Laboratory for Solid Waste Management and Environment Safety (Tsinghua University), Ministry of Education of China, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China. Electronic address: wenzg@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Zongguo
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wen
authors.affiliation: State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China; Key Laboratory for Solid Waste Management and Environment Safety (Tsinghua University), Ministry of Education of China, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
authors.forename: Fei
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Fan
mesh_terms: D000068476:Beijing; D056804:Biofuels; D002681:China; D003658:Decision Making, Computer-Assisted; D058735:Environmental Policy; D005502:Food; D008697:Methane / Q000096:biosynthesis; D010865:Pilot Projects; D012147:Restaurants; D018505:Waste Management / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D056804:Biofuels; D008697:Methane
keywords: Anaerobic digestion; Biogas; China; Food waste; MCDA; Performance evaluation