Japan’s Cosmo Oil sets 2030 annual SAF-supply goal

Japanese petrochemical company Cosmo Oil Co. Ltd. announced in late July that, in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the aviation sector, it has set a goal of supplying 3 million liters (792,516 gallons) of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) per year by 2030.

“In the international air transport sector, the International Civil Aviation Organization aims to stabilize CO2 emissions from 2021 onwards at 2019 emission levels,” Cosmo Oil stated. “To achieve this target, the use of SAF is considered to be the most effective way to reduce CO2 emissions in the future, with the Japanese government also setting the goal of replacing 10 percent of jet fuel with SAF by 2030.”

Cosmo Oil has set this SAF-supply goal to help fulfill its “social mission of continuously providing a safe and stable supply of energy, which is indispensable to our daily life, and contribute to meeting the abovementioned domestic and international goals,” the company stated.

To achieve its goal, the company said it will work to establish a domestic SAF supply chain while diversifying raw materials and production processes, including commercializing SAF made from used cooking oil at its refineries and exploring the possibility of using alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) technology to produce SAF from ethanol.

Last October, Honeywell announced that JGC Holdings Corp. and Cosmo Oil will use Honeywell Ecofining™ technology for the first commercial-scale SAF project in Japan.

The project will convert used cooking oil locally collected in Japan into SAF, with start-up scheduled in 2025.

Cosmo Oil is also part of a consortium selected for funding by Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization to establish a supply-chain model for SAF from used cooking oil, which was announced one year ago.