British multinational oil and gas company BP is planning to start producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in Australia by 2025 following the conversion of its oil refinery near Perth, Reuters quoted a senior executive of the company as saying.
The project was expected to cost “hundreds of millions” of US dollars, BP’s Asia Pacific vice president of low-carbon solutions Lucy Nation told Reuters.
BP has not disclosed expected production volumes at plant, according to the 14 July report, but Nation said output would depend on demand as the facility would be able to switch day-to-day between SAF and biodiesel production.
The company’s Kwinana plant is in Western Australia, a region dominated by the mining industry where there is high demand for diesel for trucks.
“We’re able to reutilise some of the processing equipment, the utilities and we have tanks ready to go,” Nation told a briefing held alongside the Sydney Energy Forum, hosted by the Australian government and the International Energy Agency.
Air travel currently accounts for about 2% of global carbon emissions, according to the report, and the industry is aiming to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, relying on SAF usage to increase from around 100M litres/year (26M gallons/year) in 2021 to at least 449bn litres/year within three decades.
Australia did not currently produce SAF and had no mandates for the fuel, Reuters wrote. In contrast, the European Commission is proposing that the minimum share of SAF that should be made available at EU airports should be 2% from 2025, increasing to 37% in 2040 and 85% by 2050.
