Cepsa begins supplying sustainable aviation fuel to Canary Islands

Photo: Cepsa

Cepsa announced Oct. 3 that it is now supplying sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the coast of northwestern Africa.

The energy company has made SAF permanently available at the North Tenerife and Gran Canaria airports, and in the coming weeks it will be expanding this availability to the archipelago’s other main airports.

This type of biofuel achieves a reduction of aircraft emissions by up to 90 percent throughout its entire lifecycle compared to conventional kerosene.

These Canary Islands airports have now been added to the five other major Spanish airports where Cepsa is supplying this sustainable fuel: Madrid, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Málaga and Seville.

“We’re making progress towards our goal of decarbonizing the aviation sector, while also implementing our firm commitment to supplying the Canary Islands with energy that produces low levels of CO2 emissions,” said Álvaro Macarro, Cepsa’s director of sustainable aviation. “We’re proud to be doing our part to help improve the sustainability of this region’s aviation and tourism sectors.”

Cepsa is one of the primary producers and suppliers of aviation fuels in the Spanish market.

At its La Rábida Energy Park near the city of Huelva, Spain, it produces this sustainable fuel from used cooking oils as a way of promoting the circular economy.

In addition, to guarantee the supply of SAF to its customers, in February Cepsa began the construction of the largest second-generation biofuels plant in southern Europe, together with Bio-Oils, based on an investment of 1.2 billion euros (USD$1.32 billion).

This facility, which will go into operation in 2026 in Palos de la Frontera near Huelva, will have a flexible production capacity of 500,000 metric tons of SAF and renewable diesel per year.

With this project, the company is making further progress towards its objective of becoming the top producer of second-gen biofuels in Spain and Portugal, with an annual production capacity of 2.5 million tons of biofuels, of which 800,000 tons will be from SAF—an amount sufficient to allow flight around the planet 2,000 times.