| China produced 90 million tons of food waste in 2010. Of that amount, approximately 50% was restaurant waste; 40 million tons of restaurant waste was produced in 2014, and 90% of this amount was disposed of via landfill. Up until 2015, the Chinese government has ratified 100 cities in 5 different batches to develop food waste treatment pilot projects. Anaerobic digestion technology has been selected as the leading technology in the projects, and will be implemented in 95% of the first three batches of pilot cities(66 cities). Therefore, it is vital to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of existing food waste treatment anaerobic digestion projects in order to provide lessons for future pilot projects, best practices for their efficient operation, and policy management advice.This research analysed the challenges facing food waste anaerobic digestion projects in China, and then reviewed and compared policy and management mechanisms in China and abroad. On-site investigation of food waste anaerobic digestion projects was carried out in France to analyse operation and management models. EU countries such as England, France, Sweden and Germany were comparatively analysed, as well as Singapore, Korea, and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, in order to provide references for Chinese food waste treatment projects. Based on on-site evaluation of 3 food waste-to-biogas projects, this research evaluated the technical, economic and environmental impacts of these projects; identified project operational problems and bottlenecks; and utilized multicriteria decision analysis(MCDA) modelling to identify the best-performing projects. In result, suggestions for project establishment and management policy formulation are provided.Based on the above analyses, policy suggestions were made to enhance operational efficiency of food waste anaerobic treatment projects. 7 policy suggestions were made: 1) a shift away from capital investment subsidies to performance-based subsidies; 2) the re-design and enforcement of electricity feed-in tariffs according to the economic status quo of treatment projects; 3) the promotion of bio-methane use and improvement of biogas upgrading economics; 4) the improvement of collection efficiency in order to provide food waste facilities with a steady supply of waste; 5) incentivizing biogas projects to co-digest multiple substrates for better biogas production; 6) incentivizing biogas projects to produce multiple useful energy and digestate outputs; and 7) promotion of digestate use as an additional source of revenue and means to replace chemical fertilizer. |
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