Shell, Accenture and Amex GBT fuel a greener club class

Shell, Accenture and American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) have launched Avelia a blockchain-powered digital sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) book-and-claim solutions for business travel. It is the largest such pilot at inception, offering around one million gallons of SAF – enough to power some 15,000 individual club class flights from London-to-New York.

The initial phase of the programme aims to demonstrate the credibility of the book-and-claim model. Blockchain technology is used to ensure secured allocation of SAF’s environmental attributes – it has the potential to provide a lifecycle carbon reduction of up to 80% compared to the traditional jet fuel it replaces - to companies and airlines after the fuel has been delivered into the fuel network, while ensuring transparency and accountability by avoiding issues such as double-counting.

The fuel is made from renewable sources such as used cooking oil, municipal waste and woody biomass. It can drop straight into existing infrastructure and aircraft and is viewed as one of the key elements in helping progress towards net-zero aviation. At the moment, the availability of SAF is limited and its higher price is preventing wider uptake. Stimulating demand for it is seen essential to driving expanded production and lowering costs. The Avelia platform seeks to provide a means to better aggregate the increasing willingness of global businesses to pay for verifiably greener air travel as contributor to achieving their quantitative ESG objectives. Given that pre-pandemic there were more than 14 million business flights taken to and from the UK alone each year, there is a sizeable target to aim at.

Posted by: Duncan Aitchison at 09:23

Tags: energy   blockchain   sustainability  

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