Cardano Launches Blockchain Solutions to Verify Sustainability Data for Aviation Fuel and Renewable Diesel

The Cardano Foundation and Brazilian state-owned oil and gas company Petrobras unveiled 2 projects built on the public Cardano blockchain to verify fuel sustainability data. The solutions cover sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and Diesel R renewable diesel, enabling related environmental data to be traced from source documents through final use.

The sustainable aviation fuel project is being developed by Petrobras, the Cardano Foundation, and Ledger Labs at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). SAF is considered a lower-carbon alternative to conventional aviation fuel, but its use requires reliable verification of the environmental benefits being claimed.

One issue with the existing system is that certificate data can be stored across separate documents and databases maintained by producers, airlines, and other participants. This complicates audits and creates a risk that the same environmental benefit could be counted more than once.

The project addresses this issue through a Book-and-Claim model, which separates the accounting of a physical batch of SAF from its associated environmental attributes. This allows the environmental benefit to be assigned to an airline, an organization, or an individual passenger regardless of where the fuel was produced and used.

The process consists of 5 main stages:

1. An SAF certificate is verified for compliance with CORSIA requirements and other recognized standards.
2. The verified certificate is converted into standardized digital tokens containing data on a specific volume of fuel.
3. The tokens are distributed to airlines or allocated to passenger trips based on the route and calculated emissions.
4. Passengers can claim and redeem tokens through a dedicated application, receiving a certificate that includes their name, route, distance, and number of tokens.
5. Once the environmental attribute is claimed, the corresponding tokens are permanently removed from circulation on the blockchain, preventing their reuse.

The second project involving Petrobras and PUC-Rio focuses on Diesel R, Petrobras’ renewable diesel fuel. In this case, the Cardano network links data generated at different stages of the process, including fuel production, transportation, and use.

The goal is to create a continuous digital record of the product’s life cycle. This approach could simplify verification of Scope 3 indirect emissions data, since accounting for these emissions depends on information from multiple external participants across the supply chain, including suppliers, carriers, and other companies.

Both projects create a unified, verifiable chain of records that doesn’t depend on fragmented documents and information systems. For SAF, the distributed ledger connects the original certificate to the tokens and the final claim of the environmental attribute. For Diesel R, similar infrastructure is intended to provide data traceability throughout the fuel’s life cycle.

Shell, Accenture, and American Express Global Business Travel launched the Avelia blockchain platform to promote carbon-neutral aviation fuel back in 2022.