Emirates airlines to track sustainable aviation fuel using Shell backed Blockchain platform

Emirates airlines to track sustainable aviation fuel using Shell backed Blockchain platform

UAE Emirates Airlines has signed an agreement with Shell Aviation to supply 300,000 gallons of blended sustainable aviation fuel and will track this using Blockchain enabled platform Avelia at its international hub in Dubai.

Avelia is a blockchain powered book-and-claim solution that provides users with fully traceable environmental attributes of SAF to help decarbonize their air travel.

Avelia is powered by Shell Aviation and Accenture, with support from Energy Web together with American Express Global business travel. Through Avelia, Emirates will purchase the physical SAF and associated environmental attributes to help decarbonize its Scope 1 related emissions, while Scope 3 environmental attributes associated to the same physical SAF will be purchased by Shell Corporate Travel to help decarbonize its related business travel.

According to the news, the first SAF delivery under the agreement is expected to commence before the end of the year, making it the first time that SAF is supplied through the DXB airport fuelling system, the airline said in a statement.

SAF can be blended with conventional jet fuel at a ratio of up to 50%, creating an aviation fuel that is significantly lower in lifecycle carbon emissions. In its neat form, SAF can reduce lifecycle emissions by up to 80% compared to conventional jet fuel.

Emirates President Tim Clark said: “We are proud to work in partnership with Shell to make a SAF supply available for Emirates in Dubai for the first time, and to utilize the Blockchain Avelia platform that provides business travellers the flexibility to align their sustainability targets and reduce their environmental footprint when travelling.”

Chu Yong-Yi, Vice President of Shell Corporate Travel said: “Emirates and Shell have a long-standing commercial relationship, and it is fantastic to build on this to now work together on decarbonisation. This agreement marks a step forward for the aviation industry in the UAE. Enabling SAF to be supplied at DXB for the first time is an important milestone, and a perfect example of how the different parts of the aviation value chain have a role to play in unlocking progress on SAF. We hope that this can act as a springboard for more action on SAF across the aviation industry in the UAE and region, delivering another step forward for our net zero emissions journey.”

In May this year, Emirates airline announced a $200 million sustainability R&D fund aimed to reduce the impact of fossil fuels in aviation, with Clark saying “with the current pathways available to airlines in terms of emissions reduction, our industry won’t be able to hit net zero targets in the prescribed timeline”.

Bahrain telecom operator and Ericsson deploy Blockchain project management platform

Bahrain telecom operator and Ericsson deploy Blockchain project management platform

Ericsson  and Bahrain telecom operator, Batelco, part of the Beyon Group, have deployed Blockchain enabled Ericsson Customer Acceptance platform.  As per the press release, the customer acceptance platform is  an enterprise blockchain solution for the automated collection of acceptance records upon fulfilment of agreed project deliverables. Batelco is the first telecommunication service provider to deploy the solution.

 

Ericsson Customer Acceptance (ECA) provides significant and impactful results to the customer acceptance process. It reduces the time spent on acceptance-related activities per site by up to 42 percent, thereby achieving faster time-to-market with accuracy. ECA also simplifies the process by providing a single interface for submitting and approving acceptance documents and displaying real-time status of every acceptance item submitted to the platform. Combined with other services and software capabilities, ECA also helps reduce CO2 emissions by removing the need for on-site customer visits to complete the acceptance process.

 

Batelco General Manager Technology Rashed Mohamed stated, ” Batelco is at the forefront of technological innovation, constantly seeking new ways to attain efficiency and effectiveness. We are proud to be the first telecommunication service provider to deploy the Ericsson Customer Acceptance platform. Within a short period of time, we have witnessed the benefits of deploying it. By simplifying our daily activities and achieving quicker installations and project completions, we can bring the latest technologies to our customers more efficiently.. We commend Ericsson for constantly offering new technological solutions that benefit the operations of their customers.”

 

Apart from enabling site quality assurance and improving the acceptance flow, blockchain secures the integrity of acceptance documentation and enables transparency and traceability between the parties involved.

 

Nicolas Blixell, Vice President, and Head of Ericsson GCC at Ericsson, added, “The Ericsson Customer Acceptance solution aims to provide speed, accuracy, sustainability, and efficiency to the operations between Ericsson and our customers. It strengthens trust, adds immutability and security, and provides full traceability end-to-end. Deploying the Ericsson Customer Acceptance solution with Batelco has demonstrated the benefits and efficiencies that can be achieved in a quick, secure, and resourceful manner. We look forward to future implementations of this blockchain-based solution to drive innovation and customer satisfaction. “

UAE Blockchain farmer marketplace merges with Bahrain BeanBoat

UAE Blockchain farmer marketplace merges with Bahrain BeanBoat

UAE Farmsent, a blockchain platform for farmers and producers where they can directly supply goods to the consumers, has merged with Bahrain Beanboat, pioneers of coffee direct-trade in MENA.

BeanBoat created Bahrain’s first coffee subscriptions service. Their offerings brought coffee shops and roasters some of the best and rarest coffee in the world owing to their extensive network of farmers in Colombia.

Beanboat has merged with Farmsent allowing them to tap on Farmsent’s extensive reach with clients in the MENA regions and network farmers in Colombia, and combining it with the power of Web3 of Farmsent’s network to push for the next generation of trade.

Yog Shrusti, CEO and Co-Founder of Farmsent stated, “Our mission at Farmsent is to connect farmers directly with people who are looking for quality, sustainable, traceable products. With Beanboat’s knowledge of the MENA region, we will continue to lead the way in bringing people across the region together around sustainable living. With this merger, and combined with Farmsent’s ongoing efforts in Indonesia, we aim to foster and leverage on the community of coffee farmers in Colombia and provide them access to more regions and more clients. More importantly, farmers of a different variety of produce will now have the opportunity to directly trade with clients in the MENA region. On the other side, distributors and wholesale buyers will have access to an extensive network of farmers in Colombia to ensure supply and QA of their product lines.”

 Saleh Sharif, CEO and Co-Founder of Beanboat added, “We are very excited to collaborate with Farmsent. As we aim to make the supply chain more transparent, I feel the scalability issues that were obvious in our coffee trading are now even more apparent. Beanboat will add more SKUs than coffee and bring transparency to our supply chain. With the advent of blockchain technology, we safely look forward to our new collaboration!”

More Arab women being recognized for their blockchain projects, in Oman and KSA

More Arab women being recognized for their blockchain projects, in Oman and KSA

More and more Arab females are starting to enter the blockchain ecosystem, and are being recognized for their Blockchain projects. This month both in Oman as well as Saudi Arabia, young women developed blockchain projects that will add value to their economies and societies. 

Oman in its efforts to support SMEs (Small Medium Sized), has accepted and will be funding a project developed by Egyptian engineer Mirna Mohamed. The blockchain enabled project looks to oversee the value added tax system that is being utilized in the Oman today.

In an interview Mirna Mohamed states, “My father is a credit manager and for him this was an important topic so he assisted me in developing an accounting budget system using latest technologies which included new value added tax system in Oman. I chose Blockchain because it is one of the best technologies that allow the Oman government to review and oversee the accounting procedures of different companies including their VAT disclosures.”

One of the challenges Mirna faced was the lack of understanding about Blockchain technology in the Arab world which is still not clear to many. She notes that even in Oman there is currently only one blockchain system and it is still being developed.

Oman’s Ministry of Higher Education Research and Innovation accepted Mirna’s Blockchain VAT accounting platform and will be funding its implementation.

As she notes in the interview, “Blockchain is the future.”  She calls on youth her age to learn about blockchain, how to code and utilize it because that will give them a place in the new world. Blockchain is still new in the Arab world and there are still so many opportunities out there.

In another Arab country close by, Saudi Arabia’s Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University under the auspices of the Ministry of Education acknowledged the winners of the National Women’s She Codes 2022 where a blockchain project called BidChain won third place.

BidChain, is a bidding platform utilizing blockchain technology that was developed by the female students at KSA’s King Faisal University.

Among the other projects that were recognized was an edutainment application designed to teach children the principles of saving and investment using artificial intelligence, as well as Early Detection of Metastatic Breast Cancer in Lymph Nodes using Artificial Intelligence.” 

More and more we are seeing Arab females becoming more involved in the tech sector and specifically in Blockchain. This is a positive reflection of the role women can play in the future of Web 3.