Total starts biojet production at La Mede biorefinery

Total said today that it has begun producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), or biojet, at its La Mede biorefinery in southern France.

The SAF will be produced from used cooking oil (UCO) and other waste and residues and will be delivered to French airports starting this month. The firm said it will not use vegetable oils as feedstock. France banned the use of palm oil from 2020 and has capped the use of soybean oil at 0.7pc from 2021.

Total's decision to ramp up SAF production follows France's introduction of a SAF mandate of 1pc in 2022, to increase to 2pc by 2025 and 5pc by 2030.

Total converted La Mede into a 500,000 t/yr hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) plant in July 2019. It said last year that the plant had capacity to produce up to 100,000 t/yr of SAF, but that it had been focusing on road fuels production.

Total also plans to produce up to 170,000 t/yr of SAF at its Grandpuits refinery near Paris once it has converted the facility into a biorefinery by 2024.

EU biojet production is currently around 35mn l/yr — around 123,000 t/yr — from various feedstocks. This accounts for around 0.05pc of the region's total jet fuel consumption. Output could rise to 1.5mn-1.7mn t/yr by 2030, amounting to 2-10pc of total pre-Covid jet demand, according to an industry policy paper.

SAF demand will largely be driven by national and EU-wide mandates. France's mandate follows the introduction of a 0.5pc biojet blending mandate in Norway in 2020, which will rise to 30pc by 2030. In Sweden, the government is evaluating an emissions reduction of 0.8pc from jet fuel used in the country from July 2021, increasing to 27pc by 2030, and Germany is mulling the introduction of a 0.5pc synthetic SAF mandate by 2026 that would increase to 1pc by 2028 and 2pc by 2030.

The European Commission has postponed proposals aimed at tackling aviation emissions until mid-2021, including the introduction of a 1-2pc EU-wide blending quota as well as the revision of the 1.2x multiplier component for SAF under the recast Renewable Energy Directive (RED II).

By Giulia Squadrin