Petrobras has built two research-stage blockchain applications with the Cardano Foundation and PUC-Rio’s Ledger Labs, one designed to track environmental claims tied to sustainable aviation fuel and the other to log lifecycle data for its renewable-content Diesel R, according to Crypto.news. The Cardano Foundation announced both projects on Sep. 30, 2026, and said neither has a disclosed commercial launch date.
The aviation application uses a so-called Book-and-Claim model, which lets an airline receive the environmental benefit of SAF even when a different operator burns the physical fuel. Cointelegraph reported that the tokens, called CS-SAF, carry metadata aligned with the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation, or CORSIA.
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Key facts
- The Cardano Foundation announced both applications on Sep. 30, 2026, developed with Petrobras and PUC-Rio’s Ledger Labs.
- CS-SAF tokens are retired after a claim is made, a step the Foundation describes as preventing the same environmental benefit from being used again.
- Certificates are checked against CORSIA and other recognized standards before they become standardized tokens, according to the accompanying SAF case study.
- The Diesel R project uses digital checkpoints to collect data at successive stages of production, transportation and use, with emphasis on Scope 3 emissions reporting.
- Neither project has a disclosed commercial launch date, fuel volume figure, or named airline customer.
How the aviation tokens work
Under the proposed system, a certificate is verified before any digital record enters the platform. Once verified, the case study says the certificate becomes a standardized token carrying information about its environmental attributes. Participants can issue, transfer and inspect tokens, then retire them when the associated benefit is claimed.
For passengers, the Foundation describes an application that takes departure and destination airports and calculates a matching SAF allocation. A traveler then receives a certificate showing the route, distance and allocation, with a link back to the original fuel certificate.
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Diesel R and Scope 3 reporting
The second project targets Diesel R, which Petrobras describes as diesel containing a renewable portion made by processing petroleum-based diesel alongside vegetable oils or animal fats. According to Petrobras’ product documentation, the fuel can run in existing engines, storage facilities and distribution infrastructure without adaptations, and the company sells it to distributors that supply Brazilian service stations.
The Foundation said connecting production, transport and use records would create a fuel history companies could consult when preparing emissions accounts. It places particular attention on Scope 3, which covers indirect emissions across a company’s value chain, because the necessary information can sit in separate supplier, logistics and external systems.
Rafael Fraga, the Foundation’s Latin America business development lead, said the energy transition will depend as much on trust as on new fuels, adding that increasingly complex supply chains make the origin, movement and reliability of environmental data important to the companies using it.
Why it matters
The projects extend a research relationship that began with blockchain education for Petrobras employees in 2023 and expanded in 2025 to energy-sector research with PUC-Rio’s Ledger Labs, according to Cointelegraph. Petrobras’ SAF production at its Duque de Caxias refinery has received CORSIA sustainability certification, Blockonomi reported.
Blockonomi also noted that a blockchain record can help trace a certificate after issue, but does not replace fuel certification, and that the public case study does not name airline customers, state fuel volumes or report how many tokens have been retired.
What to watch
Blockonomi said future reporting on claim volumes, audit times and registry links would show how the platform performs across fuel transactions. The Cardano Foundation has not disclosed fuel volumes covered by the applications or a timeline for broader deployment, per Cointelegraph.
Sources: crypto.news, Cointelegraph, Blockonomi
