Avelia Pilot Launch: One of the world’s first blockchain-based book-and-claim platforms for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), launched with 1 million gallons—enough for nearly 15,000 London–New York business flights.
Credible SAF Allocation: The platform ensures secure, transparent tracking and allocation of SAF’s environmental attributes, avoiding double-counting and enabling corporate carbon reductions.
Co-Investment Model for Scale: Avelia supports scalable co-funding of SAF to drive demand, reduce price premiums, and accelerate aviation’s path to net zero.
Shell, Accenture, and American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) have jointly launched Avelia, one of the world’s first blockchain-powered digital book-and-claim solutions for Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). With approximately 1 million gallons of SAF available at launch, the pilot represents the largest SAF book-and-claim initiative to date, equating to nearly 15,000 business flights between London and New York.
The platform addresses a key bottleneck in aviation decarbonization: the limited and costly supply of SAF. Avelia aims to unlock global business demand, aggregating corporate investment to help scale SAF production while ensuring accurate carbon accounting.
“SAF is a key enabler of decarbonisation in the aviation industry, and it’s available today. However, it’s currently scarce and costs more than conventional jet fuel,” said Jan Toschka, President, Shell Aviation. “Avelia will help trigger demand for SAF at scale, providing confidence to suppliers like us to further increase investment in production, and in turn helping to lower the price point for these fuels.”
Developed by Shell and Accenture with support from the Energy Web Foundation (EWF), Avelia leverages blockchain to track, verify, and allocate SAF’s environmental attributes securely. The book-and-claim model allows companies to reduce emissions in their Scope 3 categories (such as business travel), even when the physical SAF is used elsewhere in the network.
“A truly viable route to decarbonising air travel is now open for business,” said Paul Abbott, CEO of Amex GBT. “We’re calling on all companies to join us and share the costs and benefits of SAF across the travel and aviation sectors. Airlines will gain access to the buying capacity of businesses, drawing from Amex GBT’s 19,000 customers around the world.”
Accenture emphasized the platform’s ability to foster collaboration in an industry where no single stakeholder can scale change alone.
“Our vision for the Avelia platform is to bring together airlines, corporates, cargo players, and SAF suppliers in a trusted ecosystem that no individual company could build or access on its own,” said Rachel Barton, Europe Strategy Lead, Accenture. “Blockchain technology will be piloted to help ensure trust via data integrity, validate proof of ownership, and enable transparent tracking of the environmental benefits of SAF for customers.”
Shell, Accenture, and Amex GBT are the platform’s founding customers, and Shell has committed to purchasing the environmental attributes of 100,000 gallons of SAF during the pilot phase. Shell has further committed to abating 45% of its corporate travel emissions through SAF by 2030 and will scale its purchases as more SAF becomes available.
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The Avelia platform supports co-investment models that allow businesses to share the premium costs of SAF. These models rely on credible carbon accounting frameworks—such as book-and-claim—to scale effectively. Transparency, data security, and trust are central to Avelia’s design.
“Energy Web is extremely proud to support Avelia, one of the world’s first blockchain platforms for SAF,” said Jesse Morris, CEO, Energy Web. “We are confident Avelia will provide credible and verifiable information about SAF by leveraging the power of blockchain and decentralized tech, which will help grow business demand and decarbonize the aviation industry.”
Lauren Uppink Calderwood, Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism at the World Economic Forum, added: “Through the concerted effort of ambitious leaders in government and industry, we can accelerate the path to net-zero aviation by scaling the supply and use of SAF. We commend this programme’s participants for spearheading and testing an innovative model to help corporates manage and account for the mitigation of their aviation-related emissions.”
As part of the broader SAFc Framework and global push for clean aviation, Avelia’s launch provides a tangible, scalable solution to support decarbonization targets and build industry-wide momentum.
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