Photo/Illutration Aircraft used by Japan Airlines Co. and All Nippon Airways Co. line up in front of the hangars at Haneda Airport in Tokyo in 2020. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

All Nippon Airways Co. (ANA) and Japan Airlines Co. (JAL) are among 16 mostly major companies that formed a group called Act For Sky on March 2 to promote production of sustainable aviation fuel, known as SAF, through domestic recycling of used cooking oil and mountains of other waste.

The group aims to build a system to cover the entire recycling process from material collection to production that will expand their established industry boundaries. 

Using the SAF results in reduced carbon dioxide emissions compared with traditional petroleum-derived jet fuel.

The central government set a goal of domestic airline companies ensuring that SAF comprises 10 percent of fuel use by 2030.

Currently, almost all supplies of SAF come from overseas and the usage rate stands at less than 1 percent in Japan.

Other group members include major plant construction company JGC Holdings Corp., food maker Nissin Foods Holdings Co., start-up company Revo International Inc., which recycles used cooking oil, and Odakyu Electric Railway Co., which has developed an efficient system to collect waste.

The Act For Sky group is based on the premise it will collect used cooking oil and other waste from food manufacturers and local governments for recycling into SAF and selling it to airline companies.

The group will ask local governments, airport operators and other entities to join the project.

“We will need a huge amount of waste as raw materials (in the future),” Yuji Akasaka, JAL's president, said at a March 2 news conference. “One type of waste is not nearly enough. We will have to mix it with industrial waste, plastics or other trash.”

Akasaka held out high hopes for the project because “we will recycle so many kinds of wastes on a massive scale.”

One downside is that the price of SAF will be double or even triple that of conventional jet fuel, which is bound to have a massive knock-on effect for consumers.

The group plans to explain to businesses across a wide range of sectors why SAF should be used more widely to gain acceptance of much higher prices.

“From the viewpoint of economic security, domestic SAF production carries huge significance, too,” said Yuji Hirako, the president of ANA. “We intend to promote SAF more widely across businesses and take the ‘All-Japan’ approach.”

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