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How everyday cooking oil is helping Japan fight an aviation fuel crisis

Japanese homemaker Maki Watanabe carefully ⁠pours into a plastic bottle the oil she used to cook her ⁠deep-fried aubergines, doing her part in her Tokyo…

By Samantha Johnson / June 6, 2026
Japanese homemaker Maki Watanabe carefully ⁠pours into a plastic bottle the oil she used to cook her ⁠deep-fried aubergines, doing her part in her Tokyo kitchen for a national effort to ramp up production of eco-friendly jet fuel.

“It would take a tremendous amount to make an aircraft fly, so I hope we can collect more,” said Watanabe, whose penchant for cooking allows her to donate about 40 litres (10 gallons) a year.

Her contribution is pooled at a nearby supermarket that is among roughly 300 participants in a public-private project dubbed “Fry to Fly”, as the Iran war squeezes energy supply and raises costs for ‌the resource-poor country.

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Japan is looking to consumers like Watanabe with more urgency than ever as it scrambles to reach a goal of procuring a tenth of airline fuel from sustainable sources by 2030.

The world’s fourth-biggest economy estimates it needs about 1.7 million kilolitres in 2030, and hopes to gain as much as it can domestically through used cooking oil, a relatively cheap feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

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But scarce feedstock and lack of infrastructure have limited domestic output of SAF to just 30,000 kilolitres now, or 0.3 per cent of total jet fuel use.

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