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China is moving to professionalise the collection of used cooking oil (UCO) with new national standards designed to digitally track the commodity from restaurant kitchens to refineries, a shift that could strengthen — or complicate — Singapore's position as a major sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) hub.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) published draft measurement standards on September 7 for public review, aimed at eliminating the fragmented and opaque supply chain that has long dogged the country's waste oil sector. The proposed framework would require every batch of UCO to be logged and verified at each step, from food establishments to refineries.
The move comes as China ramps up SAF production to meet rising demand for lower-carbon aviation fuel and to support its broader climate commitments. SAF, which is largely derived from waste oils, can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80 percent compared with conventional jet fuel and is widely viewed by the aviation industry as the most realistic pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050.
'Without credible, standardised data at the source, it would be very difficult to enforce carbon accounting or traceability down the line,' said a China-based energy policy researcher who requested anonymity. 'It suggests the authorities are serious about building the infrastructure, both technical and administrative, that will support future SAF scale-up.'
China is currently the world's largest source of UCO, exporting 2.8 million tonnes of the material in 2025. The United States, the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Singapore, and Malaysia were among the leading buyers — countries that also host some of the world's largest SAF refineries.
Singapore, home to Finnish energy major Neste's one-million-tonne-per-year facility, is one of Asia's most important SAF refining centres. The country has been expanding its SAF uptake as part of its decarbonisation strategy.
But the new Chinese rules may benefit more than just regional partners. By professionalising domestic UCO collection, China is expected to accelerate its own SAF buildout. The country currently operates six refineries with a combined annual capacity of about two million tonnes — double that of Singapore's largest facility. Chinese capacity is projected to reach four million tonnes annually by 2030.
The CAAC's draft standards respond to widespread concerns about irregularities in the UCO supply chain. In a 2025 inspection of Hangzhou, the regulator uncovered improper sorting and illicit resale of waste oil through unauthorised channels. 'This lack of standards leaves room for raw material adulteration and unclear origins, threatening the industry's credibility and hindering the large-scale growth of China's SAF sector,' the CAAC said in an accompanying note.
Under the proposed framework, restaurants and food manufacturers would be required to provide identification details and maintain daily logs of the waste oil they generate. Collection crews would need to submit time-stamped photographs to prevent falsification. Tanker trucks transporting UCO would be monitored in real time via satellite tracking and onboard cameras, while deliveries at refineries would be cross-checked against collection records uploaded to a central system. Records would be retained for at least three years for auditing.
Lauren Moffitt, Asia biofuels editor at commodity tracking agency Argus Media, said the proposed standards appear aimed at building confidence across the UCO supply chain. 'A single SAF producer may ultimately rely on feedstock collected from thousands of restaurants, catering facilities and food manufacturers through multiple layers of collectors, aggregators and traders. Ensuring traceability across such a dispersed network is challenging, particularly once material from many different sources has been combined in storage tanks and logistics networks,' she said.
Moffitt added that the regulator may also be addressing risks tied to the rising value of UCO, which has nearly doubled to US$1,165 per tonne compared with 2018. 'As feedstocks become more valuable, regulators and certification systems typically place greater emphasis on traceability and verification to reduce the risk of misreporting,' she noted.
Industry voices have welcomed the draft. Matti Lievonen, chief executive of Hong Kong-based SAF producer EcoCeres, called the proposed specifications a constructive and potentially important step in developing China's SAF ecosystem. 'International SAF markets increasingly require robust evidence of feedstock origin, chain-of-custody, sustainability characteristics and lifecycle greenhouse gas performance,' Lievonen said.
Still, critics argue that current certification frameworks for UCO rely too heavily on paperwork. Cian Delaney, biofuels policy manager at Transport & Environment (T&E), noted that the sampling of points of origin for waste oil occurred in less than 10 percent of approved audits in China, compared with about 30 percent in the European Union. 'It is within this paper trail that there is a significant opportunity to commit fraud,' Delaney said.
In 2024, China launched a national SAF pilot programme, later expanded to cover all domestic flights departing from four airports. The growing demand has prompted Beijing to retain a larger share of its UCO supply for domestic use, potentially reducing exports to traditional buyers including Singapore.
Analysts say the dual impact of China's traceability drive could be twofold: it may streamline and legitimise UCO flows into Singapore's SAF sector in the short term, while over the longer term it could position China as a direct competitor to Singapore's own refining hub as the country seeks to expand both capacity and domestic mandates.
Source: The Straits Times