Features Bioeconomy Environment & Sustainability
Air Canada partners in biojet supply chain initiative

Air Canada will participate in Canada’s Biojet Supply Chain Initiative (CBSCI), a three-year collaborative project with 14 stakeholder organizations to introduce 400,000 litres of sustainable aviation biofuel (biojet) into a shared fuel system at a yet to be determined Canadian airport.

Previous Air Canada biofuel flights used biojet that was segregated and loaded separately into an aircraft via tanker truck. By contrast, CBSCI’s objective is to start developing a more efficient operational framework that will introduce biojet into a multi-user, co-mingled airport fuel supply system.

“We are pleased to support this important initiative by facilitating the logistics involved in the introduction of biojet to an airport’s shared fuel system,” said Teresa Ehman, director of environmental affairs at Air Canada. “Biojet holds the potential to be an important part of our strategy for achieving our longer-term industry goals of carbon neutral growth from 2020 and a 50 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050, relative to 2005 levels. The CBSCI project will contribute significantly to advancing a biojet supply chain in this country.”

The CBSCI project is a first in Canada and is aimed at creating a sustainable Canadian supply chain of biojet using renewable feedstocks. The biojet used in this project will be sourced from commercially available, certifiably sustainable Canadian oleochemical feedstocks using the Hydroprocessed Esters and a Fatty Acids (HEFA) conversion process. The biojet will be blended with petroleum jet fuel to meet all technical quality specifications before being introduced into a shared fuel tank at a Canadian airport.

Air Canada is expecting to introduce approximately 400,000 litres of blended biofuel. The CBSCI project will also identify and help solve supply logistic barriers that arise when aviation biofuels are introduced at major Canadian airports.

CBSCI includes a strong research component with the participation of Queen’s University, University of Toronto, and McGill University, who will be assisting in modeling feedstock availability, identifying and addressing barriers to biojet adoption in co-mingled fuel systems and implementing the IATA Sustainability Meta Standard.