ACI Asia-Pacific together with Narita Airport share Insights on the role of airports in adoption of SAF

2023-03-02

ACI Asia-Pacific participated in the series of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) Webinars, organised by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) on 22 February 2023.

The webinar aimed at exchanging insights on the scale up of SAF in South East Asia, and to facilitate establishing partnerships among interested parties. More than 120 participants from all ASEAN members joined the webinar.

At the webinar, Mr Ken Lau, Senior Management, Environment & IT, ACI Asia-Pacific, provided an overview of ACI Asia-Pacific’s advocacy on airport environment, and its efforts in airport decarbonisation.

Mr. Lau also addressed the importance of implementing SAF at airports in elevating airports’ environmental standards. He delivered a presentation on the airport’s perspective, reflecting the challenges and opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region, and how to scale up the supply and use of SAF through multi-sector collaborations. He addressed that multi-sector collaboration will play a critical role in ensuring a resilient aviation ecosystem that can achieve global sustainability goals.

Together with ACI Asia-Pacific, Mr. Takahiro Ohmiya, Manager, Business Group of the Refuelling Business, Narita International Airport (NRT) Corporation, shared his experiences on how government and aviation industry can work closely together to increase SAF supply and availability at airports.

The domestic movement towards decarbonisation, to accelerate carbon-neutral in Japan domestic aviation industry was addressed. Mr Ohmiya also shared insights on the current situation of SAF policy in Japan and the initiatives of Japan government on SAF dissemination. The long-term vision of “Sustainable NRT 2050” was shared at the webinar.

Committed to supporting Japan in achieving the target of 10% SAF use by 2030, set by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), NRT was the first airport in Japan where SAF was supplied to an overseas airline in 2022. Together with partners, NRT has established a domestic SAF supply chain, spanning from SAF import and quality control to delivery as well as a refuelling network for the aircraft themselves.

The airport provides not only the infrastructure to uplift SAF to the aircraft, but also acts as an entity playing a decisive role in enabling its upscale.