Alternative liquid fuels are attracting a lot of attention due to their potential for addressing possible future oil supply shortages. In China, oil shale, coal and biomass are considered as three significant feedstocks for alternative fuels. However, quantitative assessment of the sustainability of liquid fuels production based on these feedstocks is scarce. This paper uses the LCA (life cycle assessment) method to analyze energy consumption, GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, cost and local employment effects of liquid fuels production from these feedstocks. The results show that the energy consumption of BTL (biomass-to-liquid) processes is much lower than that of production of petroleum based fuels, whereas STL (shale-to-liquid) and CTL (coal-to-liquid) processes have higher energy consumption; the GHG emissions of BTL are much lower than those of STL and CTL, which do not perform well from a GHG emissions perspective; when the crude oil price is lower than 50 $/bbl, there is no economic advantage from the three alternative fuels studied, however the economic benefits increase with increase in the crude oil price and become clear as the crude oil price approaches 100 $/bbl. It is further found that more local job opportunities could be created by developing these three alternatives. Several policy suggestions for sustainable development of the liquid fuels industry are formulated on the basis of four assessment metrics. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.