Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) couple functions of waste removal and electricity generation. The future success of MFCs inevitably depends on the increase of performance at decrease of material cost. Therefore, the use of renewable and sustainable materials, e.g. cellulose, to prepare high performance materials for MFCs would be an inevitable trend. In this communication, nitrogen and phosphorus dual-doped carbons were prepared by pyrolysis of cellulose using ammonium phosphate as doping source and employed as oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalyst in air-cathode of MFCs. A maximum power density of 2293 +/- 50 mW m(-2) was generated by the air-cathode using the dual-doped carbon catalyst, which was higher than the air-cathode using Pt/C catalyst with Pt load of 0.5 mg cm(-2) (1680 +/- 32 mW m(-2)). This study provided a facile and sustainable way to prepare low-cost and high-efficient ORR catalyst for scaled-up MFC applications. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.