St1 and Norwegian to an agreement with the Norwegian Defense Forces

From now on, airplanes on business flights of the Norwegian Defense Forces will be refueled with 15% biofuel supplied by a Finnish energy company St1. The contract announced today by the airline Norwegianbetween St1 and the Defense Forces covers more than one million flights within four years.

“This ground-breaking agreement is an important step in the Norwegian defense sector’s climate and environmental strategy. The sector’s goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2030. To achieve this goal, reducing emissions from business travel and fighter and surveillance flights is key,” says the Commander of the Norwegian Defense Forces Eirik Kristoffersen According to Norwegian’s press release.

The Norwegian Defense Forces will fly more than 250,000 business trips this year, and according to Norwegian, the fuel agreement will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 2,000 tons this year. According to the Norwegian Defense Material Agency, Norway is at the forefront of emission reductions in the defense sector.

The EU will follow

The use of renewable aviation fuel will soon be mandatory – although not for Norway, which is not part of the EU. The EU’s ReFuel Aviation regulation obliges fuel producers to distribute renewable fuels at EU airports starting next year. The mixing obligation is two percent at first, six percent in 2030, 20 percent in 2035, and gradually increases to 70 percent.

15 percent of the Norwegian Defense Forces is therefore a reasonably ambitious mixing obligation. At EU airports, it will probably only be possible in ten years.

EU obligations concern the use of aviation fuel at airports with at least 800,000 passengers or one hundred thousand cargo tons. From Finland, Helsinki-Vantaa airport falls into this sector.

Refueling in Norway

Currently, no biofuel for aviation is produced in Norway. One of the conditions of the tender for the Defense Forces was that refueling must take place in Norway.

“The defense sector wants to make it easier to increase the production of this type of fuel in Norway,” says Kristoffersen in the press release.

Norwegian has decided to buy fuel quite close, St1 to open in the spring from a biorefinery in Gothenburg. The Gothenburg refinery turns food waste and crude pine oil into hvo diesel, renewable aviation fuel and biodiesel.

“The short distance of transporting the fuel helps to keep both costs and life-cycle emissions as low as possible. The voluntary agreements to which the Norwegian defense sector is committed increase predictability and enable our commitment to increasing biofuel production,” says St1’s CEO Henrikki Talvitie according to the release.