Japan’s Euglena supplies SAF to government aircraft

Japanese biofuels developer Euglena has supplied sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to a government aircraft carrying Japanese premier Fumio Kishida to international summits including the current G20 intergovernmental forum in Bali, Indonesia.

The aircraft fuelled with Euglena's SAF left Tokyo's Haneda airport on 12 November. This is the first time SAF has been used by government aircraft, the company said on 14 November.

"Blending ratio of SAF for this flight was 10pc," a company representative told Argus. "Whether the government continuously uses our SAF is yet unknown," she added.

Euglena developed and supplied SAF called Susteo, which contains used cooking oil (UCO) and euglena oils and fats extracted from microalgae as raw materials. Susteo generates carbon dioxide (CO2) during the fuel combustion stage but the plants, which are the raw material for UCO, and euglena microalgae both absorb CO2 during photosynthesis as they grow. This SAF is expected to contribute to achieving a carbon neutral state, in which the amount of CO2 emissions when using the fuel are virtually zero because the raw material growing phase cancels it out.

Japanese commercial airlines are accelerating their use of SAF for domestic flights. All Nippon Airways (ANA) has started to use mass-produced SAF for its domestic flights for the first time on 14 November. Fellow domestic airline Japan Airlines (JAL) also plans to use SAF produced by Finnish biofuels producer Neste on a flight on 18 November, which will connect Haneda to Naha in south Japan's Okinawa prefecture.

Japan's land and transport ministry (MLIT) last December set a target of 10pc SAF use by domestic airlines by 2030, after ANA and JAL set similar goals in October 2021. Japan's SAF demand will reach 2.5mn-5.6mn kl/yr by 2030 and 23mn kl/yr by 2050, according to MLIT.

By Yusuke Maekawa