For gutter oil to fly high, policy support is still needed
On the morning of March 21, a Hainan Airlines Boeing 737-800 passenger plane flew from Shanghai Hongqiao to Beijing International Airport. This flight used biofuel converted by Sinopec from waste cooking oil collected from restaurants (commonly known as "gutter oil"). This is China's first commercial passenger flight using bio-aviation fuel, marking that China's aviation industry has entered the commercial flight stage in the field of energy conservation and emissions reduction. (According to Chongqing Morning Post)
I still remember that in 2012, a piece of news that "KLM used 2,000 tons of gutter oil purchased from China to make aviation fuel" made many Chinese people troubled by gutter oil deeply envious, "Our gutter oil is still 'on the table,' while theirs has already 'taken to the skies.'" Now, our gutter oil can also be transformed into something useful, helping an aircraft complete its first passenger flight, and China has become the 4th country after the United States, France and Finland to possess independently developed and produced bio-aviation fuel technology and successfully commercialize it.
According to reports, the main advantage of biofuel is relatively low carbon dioxide emissions, which can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 50% to 80%, and by as much as 90%. Gutter oil turning into bio-aviation kerosene, on the one hand, is low-carbon and environmentally friendly and can greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions; on the other hand, it can further change the distorted direction of waste cooking oil and reduce the worry of it flowing to dining tables and harming health. However, while rejoicing that gutter oil has found a major use, we must also clearly see that although the technical difficulties have been overcome, large-scale promotion still lacks the necessary supporting measures.
Abroad, gutter oil actually refers to waste fats and oils, because kitchen waste oil is not allowed to be poured casually into sewers. As one of the countries with the most developed catering industry in the world, France's 1992 Waste Disposal Law clearly stipulated that kitchen waste oil must not be discarded mixed with other kitchen waste. Otherwise, restaurants can be fined heavily, or even ordered to suspend business, and operators can be held criminally responsible. By contrast, in China, waste oil produced by catering is often poured directly into sewers, and gutter oil is mostly mixed with various kinds of garbage and impurities, causing great trouble for recycling and reuse.
Due to technical and other reasons, the production cost of bio-aviation kerosene is much higher, often 2 to 3 times that of petroleum-based aviation kerosene, which will undoubtedly greatly affect airlines' enthusiasm for purchasing and using it. At the same time, compared with oil-collecting "guerrillas," biofuel refining enterprises have no competitive advantage in purchase prices, creating difficulties for raw material collection and large-scale production. Experts suggest that government departments need to learn from the experience of developed countries and formulate incentive policies for using gutter oil to produce biofuel, including providing subsidies, reducing or exempting taxes, and giving support for research and development funds.
Although gutter oil's "flight" has succeeded, one unavoidable fact is that China currently has no relevant laws or policies for adding biofuel to gasoline, diesel and aviation kerosene.
An interesting coincidence is that 3 days before the first flight of the gutter oil aircraft, the State Food and Drug Administration once again issued a notice to strictly prevent gutter oil from reaching dining tables. In fact, after so many years of a protracted battle with gutter oil, we should stop and reflect properly, and think about the principle that "blocking is not as good as guiding." Rather than exhaustingly pursuing and intercepting gutter oil, it would be better to use more funds and energy to help turn waste into treasure. Realizing the normalization of gutter oil "taking to the skies" as soon as possible is expected to treat both symptoms and root causes with twice the result for half the effort.