Efforts are being stepped up in Japan to increase used cooking oil (UCO) stocks for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production, according to a Reuters report.
The country was scrambling to reach its target of sourcing a tenth of airline fuel from sustainable resources by 2030, the 5 June report said.
Although the world’s fourth biggest economy had estimated it would need about 1.7M kilolitres of sustainable feedstocks to meet that target, scarce feedstocks and lack of infrastructure had limited domestic output of SAF to 30,000 kilolitres, or 0.3% of total jet fuel use, Reuters wrote.
“We're facing a reality far harsher than expected,” the country’s top two carriers, ANA and Japan Airlines, told a joint presentation on SAF efforts in May.
The situation in Japan reflects the global race to secure SAF feedstocks, according to the report.
A Reuters investigation last year showed that only about a fifth of SAF projects launched by airlines globally had materialised.
Among countries that had adopted a national mandate, Singapore relied heavily on imported feedstock for its 1% target, the report said.
This year would prove critical for refiners’ SAF efforts as they would have to make final investment decisions to allow for mass production in 2030, the Japanese government said.
Leading Asian energy company Eneos has said the volume of cooking oil that could be collected was a key factor in deciding if it would pursue a venture with Mitsubishi Corp to produce 400,000 kilolitres of SAF after the 2028 fiscal year.
A clearer outlook for demand was needed to justify expanding production, said engineering firm JGC, which started Japan’s first commercial-scale SAF plant last year.
JGC’s joint venture with Cosmo Energy and biodiesel producer REVO International has a capacity of about 30,000 kilolitres/year.
Meanwhile, public-private supply chain initiatives are stepping up efforts as the target year approaches.
The Tokyo government has plans to commission more businesses to raise awareness and coordinate UCO collection from the capital’s 7.8M households.
For example, in a bid to increase UCO stocks, around 300 participants, including supermarkets, were participating in a public-private project “Fry to Fly”, which involved UCO collection, the report said.
Fujifilm was among the business enterprises that had started oil collections this year from employee cafeterias, while retail giants Aeon, Ito-Yokado and 7-Eleven were setting up more drop boxes, Reuters wrote.
