Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled energy company, is testing Cardano blockchain technology in two research projects aimed at improving the tracking of lower-carbon fuel claims and preventing the same emissions benefit from being counted twice. The Cardano Foundation announced the projects Wednesday and provided details to CoinDesk.
One project focuses on sustainable aviation fuel, a lower-carbon alternative to conventional jet fuel that can be used with existing aircraft and airport facilities. The other examines Diesel R, a Petrobras product made partly from renewable feedstocks, including vegetable oils and animal fats.
Frederik Gregaard, chief executive of the Cardano Foundation, said Brazil has repeatedly adopted Cardano technology, pointing to SERPRO in the public sector and SENAI in industry. He said Petrobras’ involvement demonstrates continued interest from major regional companies in using blockchain for provenance and traceability.
Gregaard also highlighted Cardano’s recent integration with x402 and Fireblocks’ support for Cardano Native Tokens as signs of expanding institutional interest. He said these developments could encourage enterprises to explore blockchain applications.
The sustainable aviation fuel project addresses the accounting issues associated with the book-and-claim model. Under this system, an airline can purchase the environmental benefit associated with sustainable fuel even when the physical fuel is consumed elsewhere.
Such a system requires reliable records showing who owns an environmental benefit and when it has been used. Without that information, the same emissions reduction could potentially be claimed more than once.
The proposed Cardano application would record the source of each environmental benefit, its recipient and the time it was claimed. This creates a traceable record intended to prevent duplicate accounting.
In one potential use case, a passenger could enter their departure and destination airports and calculate the relevant fuel benefit. A certificate could then connect that allocation to the certificate associated with the original fuel.
The Diesel R project would track the fuel through multiple stages, recording information from production and transportation through to its eventual use. The data could then be combined into a continuous history of the fuel’s journey.
That information may help companies calculate Scope 3 emissions, which represent indirect emissions throughout suppliers, customers and other parts of a company’s value chain. Obtaining accurate data for these emissions can be difficult because it frequently resides with external businesses.
Both initiatives remain at the research stage. The Diesel R system is still described as a proposed model, and the announcement did not specify the volume of fuel involved or provide a timetable for broader implementation.
The projects come as Cardano expands its work with x402, a payment standard that enables applications and AI agents to pay for data or computing services on demand. Cardano’s initial x402 payment-processing software has been tested on its pre-production network, although commercial deployment on the live blockchain has not yet been demonstrated.
