SIA to sell green fuel credits from July

PASSENGERS including corporate flyers as well as freight forwarders on Singapore Airlines : C6L 0% (SIA) flights will be able to reduce their carbon footprint by buying greener jet fuel credits from July.

The national carrier together with Temasek and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) will start selling sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) credits to travellers and freight forwarders as part of a CAAS-SIA-Temasek pilot to promote the use of the greener fuel in the Republic.

Freight forwarders can in turn offer the SAF credits for sale to their downstream clients to reduce carbon emissions from their business operations.

The SAF credit scheme was announced at the 3-day sustainability conference Ecosperity Week by the Minister for Transport S Iswaran on Wednesday (Jun 8).

He said: “These SAF credits provide an opportunity for businesses and travellers to reduce the carbon footprint from air travel and air freight.”

A thousand credits will be available for purchase, with every credit helping to reduce 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. These SAF credits are generated from the 1,000 tonnes of SAF which are blended for all SIA and its budget carrier Scoot flights out of the airport in a 1-year pilot programme from the third quarter.

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In a joint statement, the 3 parties in the pilot - state investment company Temasek, its majority-owned airline group SIA and CAAS - said that the credit purchasers can also help to stimulate demand for SAF, support the development of the nascent SAF industry, and advance the adoption of SAF for aviation sustainability.

SAFs currently cost several times that of conventional jet fuels, and credit schemes are one way for airlines to bring down the cost of using more eco-friendly fuels.

The SAF credits will be registered as part of a pilot project within the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials Book and Claim System to ensure that the SAF credit transactions are conducted in a trusted and transparent manner, with no double counting of credits. 

Also, SIA customers will be able to purchase a mix of SAF credits and carbon offsets from the fourth quarter, as part of the airline group’s voluntary carbon offset programme. 

And the carrier will offer a bundled portfolio of SAF credits and carbon credits on Climate Impact X, a global exchange, for carbon credits in its bid to meet corporate demand for SAF while balancing affordability.

Iswaran also furnished an update on electric vehicle registrations in Singapore, saying that such green vehicles made up 8.4 per cent of all new cars registered in the first 5 months of this year, more than twice the rate that of 2021’s and a 20-fold jump over 2020’s. 

The city-state aims to have all vehicles run on cleaner energy by 2040.

The Ecosperity conference, being held from Tuesday to Thursday at the Sands Expo & Convention Centre, is organised by Temasek.