Brazilian state-controlled energy company Petrobras has developed two blockchain applications on Cardano to track sustainability attributes for sustainable aviation fuel and its renewable diesel product known as Diesel R. The projects form part of an ongoing research and development collaboration involving the Cardano Foundation and researchers at PUC-Rio’s Ledger Labs.

Announced on September 30, 2026, the initiatives aim to create verifiable digital records that help prevent double-counting of emissions benefits and improve transparency across complex fuel supply chains. Both remain in the research stage, with no disclosed volumes of fuel covered or timeline for commercial deployment.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Tracking with Book-and-Claim Model

The first application focuses on sustainable aviation fuel, a lower-carbon alternative to conventional jet fuel that can operate within existing aircraft and airport infrastructure. It employs a Book-and-Claim model that separates the environmental benefit of the fuel from its physical delivery. This allows airlines, companies or individual passengers to claim the associated sustainability attributes even if the fuel is used elsewhere in the global network.

Environmental attributes linked to certified SAF are tokenized on Cardano as CS-SAF digital tokens. These tokens carry metadata aligned with the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, or CORSIA. The system records the origin of each benefit, the recipient and the moment it is claimed, ensuring the same environmental gain cannot be used more than once.

An accompanying application enables passengers to enter departure and destination airports, calculate a corresponding allocation of the benefit and receive a digital certificate. The certificate ties the individual journey back to the original fuel certificate, creating a transparent link between the traveler’s claim and the certified sustainability data.

Petrobras produces SAF at its Duque de Caxias refinery using a combination of petroleum and renewable resources. The fuel is certified for CORSIA compliance through recognized sustainability frameworks that examine feedstocks, production methods and lifecycle carbon emissions. Blockchain records support post-issuance tracing of certificates but do not replace the underlying certification and audit processes required for regulatory recognition.

Diesel R Lifecycle Traceability

The second application addresses Diesel R, Petrobras’ renewable diesel made partly from vegetable oils, animal fats and other renewable feedstocks blended with conventional diesel. The model creates digital checkpoints at stages of production, transportation and end use. These checkpoints generate a continuous, auditable record of the fuel’s journey through the supply chain.

Developers intend the resulting data trail to support Scope 3 greenhouse-gas emissions reporting. Scope 3 covers indirect emissions across a company’s wider value chain, often requiring information held by suppliers, logistics providers and other external parties. By connecting fragmented records into a single verifiable history, the system seeks to strengthen the reliability of emissions data used for corporate reporting.

Research Collaboration Background

The two applications build on a research and development partnership that began in 2023 with blockchain education programs for Petrobras employees. The collaboration expanded in 2025 to include energy-sector research with PUC-Rio’s Ledger Labs. The Cardano Foundation described the projects as continuing Brazil’s adoption of the blockchain for provenance and traceability applications across government and industry.

Cardano Foundation Chief Executive Frederik Gregaard noted the country’s consistent engagement with the technology and the growing institutional interest in on-chain solutions for data integrity. No specific airline customers, transaction volumes or retired sustainability claims have been disclosed, indicating the work remains at the technical research stage rather than a live commercial service.

Similar Book-and-Claim approaches for sustainable aviation fuel have been explored by other energy companies seeking scalable ways to manage environmental attributes without requiring physical fuel delivery to every claimant. The Petrobras projects apply the same principle of separating claims from physical product while adding Cardano’s public ledger for immutable recording of origins, assignments and retirements.

Both initiatives focus on making environmental claims and fuel lifecycle information easier to verify in settings where data currently sits across multiple organizations and systems. The Cardano Foundation positioned the work as part of its broader portfolio of real-world applications supporting industries that require provenance, transparency and auditability.