Inaugural fuelling with Swedavia’s aviation biofuel at Stockholm Arlanda Airport today

Swedavia is the first company in the world to purchase aviation biofuel corresponding to the amount used for trips its employees took on official business in 2016. Today an aircraft was fuelled for the first time at Stockholm Arlanda Airport with this biofuel.

Swedavia has purchased 450 tonnes of biofuel via the Fly Green Fund* at a cost of SEK 7.5 million. This quantity of biofuel corresponds to the amount of fuel used for Swedavia’s official business travel in 2016, which is a unique environmental effort.

The aim of Swedavia’s investment in aviation biofuel is to promote the domestic production of biofuel and help achieve the ambition of making Swedish domestic air travel completely fossil-free by 2030 in order to reduce the environmental impact of air travel. Today there is very limited access to aviation biofuel, and the price is too high for airlines.

This inaugural fuelling, of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) flight SK1419, which departed at 10:00 a.m. for Copenhagen, is unique in another sense. This is the first time aviation biofuel has been handled through the regular logistics chain for aviation fuel. For all other refuellings using biofuel, for instance in Oslo, special solutions have been used. Today’s fuelling at Stockholm Arlanda shows that the aviation biofuel market is well on its way to maturity and that it is possible to buy aviation biofuel in the same way as fossil aviation fuel.

“We at Swedavia want to lead the way and help increase the demand for aviation biofuel. We pay the added cost for the more expensive biofuel, which is something that other companies, organisations and individuals also have an opportunity to do today. When demand rises, market players will dare to invest in this alternative to today’s fuel,” says Jonas Abrahamsson, president and CEO of Swedavia.

Since the supply of biofuel is so limited at present, there is a risk that the fuel will mainly be used for road vehicles, which have other options such as diesel and electricity. The air travel industry, which currently has liquid aviation fuel as the only alternative to biofuel, therefore risks falling behind other transport modes if access to biofuel does not increase.

The initiative to purchase aviation biofuel is part of Swedavia’s extensive climate work. The company’s target is zero emissions of fossil carbon dioxide from its own operations by 2020. Some important measures to achieve this are airport vehicles that run on electricity or biogas, energy efficiency improvements and the transition from fossil fuel heating to “green” electricity and heating. The biofuel was produced by Altair and delivered by SkyNRG in partnership with AirBP.

The Fly Green Fund is an economic association that aims to help make the Nordic countries a world-leading region in biofuel-based air travel. Read more at flygreenfund.se.