Cardano initiatives help trace, verify sustainability of Petrobras’ SAF, renewable diesel

The Cardano Foundation, an independent, Swiss-based nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing Cardano as public digital infrastructure, announced Sept. 30 two new initiatives with Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled energy firm and one of Latin America’s most valuable companies.

As part of an ongoing R&D collaboration, the teams have delivered two blockchain applications focused on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and Diesel R, Petrobras’ brand of coprocessed renewable diesel.

Brazil’s oil-and-gas market is projected to reach USD$28.82 billion by 2031, underscoring the scale of the sector in which these initiatives are being developed.

Against that backdrop, both projects focus on a specific challenge: making environmental claims and fuel-lifecycle data easier to trace and verify.

These initiatives address different parts of the renewable fuel lifecycle.

For SAF, Cardano connects a physical-fuel certificate to a digital record of the associated environmental gains, creating a clear trail from the original certificate through to the final claim.

For renewable diesel, the technology links information across production, transportation and use, improving visibility over the fuel journey and the emissions-related data associated with it.

Making SAF claims traceable

The SAF R&D project brings together Petrobras, PUC-Rio through its blockchain center Ledger Labs, and the Cardano Foundation.

SAF is a lower-carbon alternative to conventional jet fuel that can be used within existing aviation infrastructure.

As adoption grows, airlines and passengers also need credible ways to verify the environmental benefit associated with its use.

The project uses a book-and-claim model, which separates that environmental benefit from the physical fuel itself.

This allows the benefit to be assigned to an airline, company or passenger even when the SAF is produced or used elsewhere.

Cardano provides the traceable record behind the process, showing where the benefit originated, who it was assigned to and that it has only been claimed once.

The application also extends to individual passengers.

Travelers can enter their departure and destination airports, calculate the corresponding CS-SAF amount—the digital token used to represent the SAF environmental benefit—and receive a certificate recording their route, distance traveled and allocation.

This links the passenger’s claim back to the original SAF certificate.

Extending traceability across renewable diesel

A second Petrobras project, developed with PUC-Rio, applies Cardano to Diesel R, Petrobras’ brand of coprocessed renewable diesel.

The proposed model creates digital checkpoints across production, transportation and use, converting information from each stage into a continuous record of the fuel’s lifecycle.

This is particularly relevant for reporting of scope 3 greenhouse-gas emissions, which covers indirect emissions generated across a company’s wider value chain and often relies on data spread across suppliers, logistics providers and other external systems.

By connecting those records, the model can create a clearer supply-chain history and strengthen the traceability and auditability of information used in emissions accounting.

“The energy transition will depend as much on trust as it does on new fuels,” said Rafael Fraga, the Cardano Foundation’s business-development lead in Latin America. “As value chains become more complex, proving where environmental data comes from, how it moves and who can rely on it becomes critical. Public blockchain gives us the opportunity to make that trust part of the system by design, providing industries with a shared, verifiable foundation for the next generation of energy markets.”

The two projects apply the same underlying principle to different parts of the energy transition: creating a reliable digital trail for information that today often sits across fragmented systems, organizations and supply chains.

The work adds to the Cardano Foundation’s growing portfolio of real-world blockchain applications in Brazil, demonstrating how public digital infrastructure can support industries where provenance, transparency and auditability are increasingly important.

The full case study can be found here.