Decarbonisation Technology – August 2021

SAF enables the industry to reduce the use of fossil fuels

Reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80% compared to fossil fuel over the lifecycle*

Sami Jauhiainen

Co2

In addition to Lufthansa, the company’s customers now include Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, ANA, Finnair, KLM, and several other airlines. Neste SAF is available at multiple major international airports, such as San Francisco and Schiphol. The company is also working with Shell, BP and others to expand its reach further. “It’s been a long journey for Neste,” says Sami Jauhiainen, Vice President Renewable Aviation. “Getting the waste and residue raw material for biofuels requires partnerships and a large aggregation network. It’s very fragmented, so we’ve done a lot of work on sourcing the material. We’ve also been continuously investing in our pre-treatment processes so that we have the capability to refine lower and lower quality raw materials into SAF.” Last year, Neste acquired US-company Mahoney Environmental – a leading collector and recycler of used cooking oil. The acquisition follows that of Dutch animal-fat trader IH Demeter in 2018. Jauhiainen says a big milestone for the industry came around 2015 through an EU-funded project called the Initiative Towards sustAinable Kerosene for Aviation (ITAKA). The project brought about the first use of an underground hydrant system – instead of a truck – to bring SAF to aircraft at Oslo’s Gardermoen Airport. “The standards have set a 50% maximum for SAF, so it always needs to be mixed with fossil jet fuel before being brought to the airport,” says Jauhiainen. “Fundamentally, though, there are no limitations to using SAF in higher quantities in modern aircraft, so this is a focus area for many leading OEMs. Boeing has even set a target that in 2030 its planes will be able to use only sustainable fuel.”

It is a drop-in solution that can be implemented immediately

More than 40 airlines already fly with SAF

300,000 commercial flights have used SAF since 2016

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ment LCA methodologies, among which EU RED and CORSIA.

capacity to refine 100,000 t/y of SAF at its Porvoo site in Finland. With an expansion of its Singapore refinery already under way and an extra investment in its Rotterdam site, the company will have the capacity to produce some 1.5 million t/y of SAF by the end of 2023.

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