Biofuels & SAF
Acelen builds traceability into a new SAF and renewable diesel value chain
Acelen Renewables is using MARCO to trace feedstock, volumes and emissions from cultivation to SAF and renewable diesel production in Brazil.
1bn litres
planned annual capacity of SAF and renewable diesel
Mass Balance, GHG & PCF
The challenge
Acelen Renewables is developing one of Brazil's largest renewable fuel platforms, combining agriculture with industrial refining to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel (HVO). Its plans include investment of about $3 billion, a target capacity of 1 billion litres of renewable fuels a year and macaúba cultivation on 180,000 hectares of degraded pastureland.
A new value chain on that scale has to prove its credentials from the start. Buyers and regulators want evidence on raw material origin, land eligibility and emissions at every stage, under frameworks such as CORSIA, the US Renewable Fuel Standard, low carbon fuel standards and Brazil's Fuel of the Future law. Without digital records, certification would be slow, costly and hard to scale. Macaúba, a palm native to Brazil, is central to Acelen's plans, so land data matters from the very first harvest.
What MARCO does
Acelen and Finboot are building traceability on MARCO from feedstock cultivation to fuel production.
Farms and suppliers record origin and land data at source. Mass Balance tracks sustainable volumes batch by batch as they move through processing, and GHG & PCF calculates emissions at each stage so they can be reported per batch. Every record is sealed, so auditors and customers can verify the data behind each claim.
The work focuses on three areas: raw material traceability, land eligibility and emissions at each stage of the chain. Batch-level records mean each delivery of SAF or HVO can carry its own sustainability and emissions data. Acelen is also looking at how tokenisation can support the value chain. As new farms, suppliers and plants join, they are added to the same records.
Results
The platform is being built alongside the production plans, so evidence is in place as volumes grow. It is designed to give Acelen:
- Credible sustainability reporting based on primary data
- Transparency across the value chain, from biomass to fuel
- Audit-ready records for certification
- A base for future requirements such as product passports
These are goals, not results yet: Acelen's production is still being developed. What MARCO puts in place now is the record-keeping that will let Acelen prove its claims from the first batch.
The tool will ensure transparency throughout the value chain, from the origin of the biomass to the production of the fuel, and will allow us to show compliance with criteria such as feedstock eligibility, sustainability, and emissions calculation while incorporating technology solutions such as blockchain and tokenization.