Cardano News: Brazil’s Petrobras Taps Blockchain to Track Cleaner Fuels

Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled energy company, is testing the Cardano blockchain in two research projects designed to track lower-carbon fuel claims and prevent emissions reductions from being counted more than once. The projects were announced Wednesday by the Cardano Foundation and shared with CoinDesk.

One initiative focuses on sustainable aviation fuel, a lower-carbon substitute for conventional jet fuel that can be used with existing aircraft and airport infrastructure. The second covers Diesel R, Petrobras’ diesel product that incorporates renewable feedstocks such as vegetable oils and animal fats.

“Brazil has been one of the most consistent adopters of Cardano, from SERPRO in government to SENAI in industry. It’s great to see Petrobras, one of the largest firms in the region, continue to see value in on-chain provenance and traceability,” Frederik Gregaard, chief executive of the Cardano Foundation, told CoinDesk.

Gregaard also said institutional interest in Cardano continues to expand, pointing to the arrival of x402 on Cardano and Fireblocks’ support for Cardano Native Tokens. He said the developments could make the technology increasingly relevant to enterprises evaluating blockchain-based applications.

The sustainable aviation fuel project addresses an accounting challenge associated with selling environmental benefits through a system known as book-and-claim. Under this model, an airline can purchase the environmental benefit associated with sustainable fuel even when the physical fuel is consumed at another location.

Because the environmental benefit can be separated from the physical fuel, the system requires records showing who owns the benefit and when it has been claimed. This helps ensure that the same emissions reduction is not reported by multiple parties.

The Cardano-based application would record the origin of each environmental benefit, the party that receives it and the point at which it is claimed. The system is intended to provide a traceable record that can help prevent duplicate claims.

In a practical example, a passenger could enter their departure and destination airports, calculate the associated fuel benefit and receive a certificate connecting their allocation to the original fuel certificate.

The Diesel R project takes a different approach by recording data at each stage of the fuel’s lifecycle, from production and transportation through to consumption. These records would be linked to create a traceable history of the fuel.

Such a system could assist companies in calculating and reporting Scope 3 emissions, which cover indirect emissions generated across suppliers, customers and other parts of a company’s value chain. Relevant data is often held by separate businesses, making it difficult to compile.

Both initiatives are still in the research stage. The Diesel R model has been described as a proposal, while the announcement did not provide information on the fuel volumes involved or a timetable for broader deployment.

Cardano also joined x402 this month, a payment standard designed to allow applications and AI agents to automatically pay for data and computing services when needed. Its initial payment-processing software has been tested on Cardano’s pre-production network, although commercial deployment on the live blockchain has yet to be demonstrated.

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