France’s TotalEnergies has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Air France-KLM to supply sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) to the latter over the ten years starting in 2023, as reported by Reuters on December 5. Under the agreement, TotalEnergies will deliver more than 1m cubic meters or 800,000 tons of SAF, mainly used for flights departing from Air France-KLM’s home countries France and the Netherlands. TotalEnergies will produce SAFs at its biorefineries. The company claimed that such fuel could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80% on average over the entire lifecycle, compared with their fossil equivalent. 

SAFs are made from a variety of sustainable resources, such as forestry and agricultural waste, used cooking oil, carbon captured from the air, and green hydrogen. These fuels enable hard-to-abate industries like aviation, shipping, and chemicals to mitigate their carbon footprints. In 2014, TotalEnergies and Air France-KLM already launched a two-year experiment during which 78 flights between Paris-Orly and Toulouse and between Paris-Orly and Nice were powered by 10% SAF supplied by TotalEnergies. In April 2022, TotalEnergies also collaborated with Japanese oil company ENEOS to jointly study the feasibility of manufacturing SAFs in ENEOS’s refinery projects. TotalEnergies aims to manufacture 1.5m tons of SAFs by 2030. In 2021, global airlines used around 100,000 cubic meters of SAFs, a very small amount compared to the total fuel consumption for the industry.

Sour****ces:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/totalenergies-air-france-klm-agree-sustainable-jet-fuel-deal-2022-12-05/

https://totalenergies.com/media/news/press-releases/totalenergies-and-air-france-klm-sign-memorandum-understanding-supply

https://www.ogj.com/refining-processing/refining/article/14274969/totalenergies-eneos-launch-study-for-saf-production-at-negishi-refinery

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/11/sustainable-aviation-fuel-costs-more-but-consumers-willing-to-pay-iata.html