Ethanol producer Atvos has joined other Brazilian companies aiming to move into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), with an eye on the country's proposed formal policy to advance future fuels, president and chief executive Bruno Serapiao said.
Atvos, the former sugar and alcohol arm of Novonor, previously Odebrecht, "wants to be a major future fuels player," Serapiao said on the sidelines of the UN Cop 28 climate change conference in Dubai. The company expects to make a final investment decision on SAF in 2025, with the aim of starting production in 2028. Investment levels will be determined in 2024, he said.
Atvos overall expects to invest R1.6bn ($324mn) by the end of the 2023-2024 harvest and another R1.5bn/harvest in each of the next two seasons, including in its SAF initiative and potentially in biomethane, the company has said. SAF can be made from a variety of feedstocks, but Atvos would use the alcohol-to-jet pathway to convert its sugarcane-based ethanol production into SAF. It also is exploring corn-based ethanol produced with lower carbon intensity than traditional methods.
Biomethane, which can fuel heavy transportation, would be made from vinasse, a byproduct of sugarcane crushing. The biomethane produced would fuel Atvos' trucks that transport sugarcane, either by purchasing new trucks or adapting the existing engines.
While Atvos has provided no timeline for its plans, it said that pending policies and regulation in the space will support its aimsin the country.
Brazilian lawmakers could pass a framework meant to support this progress, known as the Fuel of the Future program, as early as in the new few weeks in the lower house and by early 2024 or before in the senate, said Evandro Gussi, the head of Brazil sugarcane industry association Unica.
Not positioning Brazil to take advantage of this would repeat the mistake from about 20 years ago, when the country exported soybeans to China rather than developing its own soybean crushing facilities, Serapiao said.
"We have all the parts of the value chain" for SAF, he said. "But we need the policy in place."
The market also has a long way to go, said Julio Friedmann, chief scientist with US-based carbon management company Carbon Direct. Only 0.1pc of jet fuel supply now is SAF and most of that is made from used cooking oil, the supply of which is not expected to grow.
"There aren't enough McDonald's in the world," Friedmann said. Commercially significant volumes of SAF may not enter the market for another 10 years, and the modest aim of 3bn USG by 2030 will not be met. But Brazil may be among the best-positioned countries to advance the market, he said.
