Environmentally Sustainable Petroleum Products

Over the years, the petroleum industry has implemented a range of environmental measures, including investing in heavy oil desulfurization equipment, reducing the environmental impact of automobile fuels (gasoline and diesel oil), and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by adding bio-ETBE to gasoline. As a member of the Cosmo Energy Group, Cosmo Oil supports these oil industry initiatives and offers a variety of environmentally sustainable petroleum products.

 

The Japanese petroleum industry has been introducing biofuels since 2007, including trial sales of bio-ETBE blended gasoline. In 2011, the introduction of biofuel became a legal requirement under the Energy Supply Structure Advancement Act. As part of these developments, Japan Biofuels Supply LLP was established in January 2007 to procure and distribute biofuel in Japan, and Cosmo Oil participates as a partner company.

 

Japan Biofuels Supply LLP

As they grow, plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis. When biofuels made from plants are burned, the resulting CO2 is not considered to be additional emissions into the atmosphere, making biofuels carbon neutral. Since ETBE is produced from plant-based bioethanol, when it is added to gasoline, it helps mitigate the increase in atmospheric CO2 from petroleum combustion.
Cosmo Oil began producing and selling gasoline containing bio-ETBE in 2010.
The amount of bio-ETBE blended into gasoline in fiscal 2023 was 297,000 kiloliters, and the avoided CO2 emissions from this blended fuel were calculated as 210,000 t-CO2.

 

Japan Biofuels Supply LLP: What is bio-gasoline? (in Japanese)

At the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) general meeting held in 2016, the aviation industry made a commitment to stabilize international civil aviation net CO₂ emissions at 2019 levels, starting in 2021. One of the ways to achieve this goal is to utilize sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). In Japan, the government and private companies are working together to replace 10% of the fuel used by domestic airlines with SAF by 2030.
Accordingly, Cosmo Oil has set a target to supply 300,000 kiloliters of SAF per year by 2030.

 

Cosmo Oil continues to help build a SAF supply chain in Japan while diversifying the raw materials and manufacturing processes involved. These efforts include a NEDO project¹ for commercializing SAF production at Cosmo refineries by utilizing used cooking oil as a raw material (adopted in July 2021), as well as a study on SAF manufacturing based on an alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) process that uses bioethanol as the raw material.

1. Publicly solicited project by the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, a national research and development agency in Japan: Development of Production Technologies for Bio-Jet Fuels— Building a Supply Chain Model through Demonstration

As of mid-January 2023, Cosmo Oil Marketing has completely switched the fuel it uses for exclusively contracted tanker trucks and other vehicles that transport petroleum products in the Kinki region surrounding Osaka, Japan. To operate these vehicles, it now uses biodiesel, a fuel derived from renewable resources, which helps to reduce CO₂ emissions.
This biodiesel is made by REVO International Inc. The company procures waste cooking oil in Japan to manufacture C-FUEL,¹ and then it is blended with light fuel oil refined and produced by Cosmo Oil to create a 5% biodiesel. The fuel reduces CO₂ emissions compared to conventional diesel, while meeting the mandatory standards for diesel under Japan’s Act on the Quality Control of Gasoline and Other Fuels. Accordingly, Cosmo Oil Marketing has begun supplying the new product as Cosmo CF-5.
As a first step, we are working to reduce CO₂ emissions by continuously using Cosmo CF-5 for approximately 50 tanker trucks that transport petroleum products from Cosmo Oil’s Sakai Refinery to customers in the Kinki area, as well as for work vehicles at the Sakai Refinery site. (The CO₂ reduction effect from this initiative is calculated to be approximately 159 t-CO₂ per year).

1. Recycled biodiesel fuel that is made from 100% used cooking oil. This alternative to light fuel oil is refined by adding methanol to vegetable oil and removing glycerin through a chemical reaction (ester exchange reaction).