22 January 2025
This week, we started our 2025 event calendar with the ISCC PLUS & Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) Conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Tuesday, 21 January.
Around 220 attendees gathered at the Grand Hotel Nikko, in Tokyo’s Daiba district. We kicked off the event with a series of short talks to introduce the day’s most relevant topics – starting with a general welcome and introduction from Dr Norbert Schmitz, Managing Director at ISCC, Germany and Steffen Müller, Vice Chair of the ISCC Association.
“Today marks a significant milestone in our journey in Japan and the APAC region. We are thrilled to welcome our guest speakers and attendees for a day of knowledge exchange and networking as we embark on an exciting new year for sustainability.”
This was followed by a talk from Dr Jan Henke, Director of ISCC System & Meo Carbon Solutions, about the opportunities for supporting the bio-economy and circular economy with ISCC, a presentation about the impact of the EU Green Deal on sustainability regulation and the role of certification, and updates on USA sustainability regulation presented by Steffen Müller.
After a quick coffee break and networking session, attendees were invited to join one of two parallel event streams: ISCC PLUS and SAF.
Stream 1: ISCC PLUS
Starting with the latest system updates from ISCC PLUS, stream 1 opened the floor to a wide range of talks that gave attendees real, practical insights and a glimpse into the real stories of our system users.
One aspect explored during the session was the many benefits that ISCC PLUS offers brand owners. The talk, ‘Benefit and Usage of ISCC PLUS Certification and as a Brand Owner’, used plastic bottle recycling as an example of how sustainable supply chains, when held accountable by ISCC PLUS, can provide clear sustainability guarantees to end consumers. We can see that this clearly matters to end consumers, as the certification, licensing, and claims have all proven to support sales.
Third-party certifications like ISCC PLUS can play a vital role in Japan’s fast-growing biobased and circular plastics regulatory landscape. In the talk ‘Embracing ISCC PLUS Certified Plastics: A Step Toward a Sustainable Future’, one of our speakers demonstrated this by sharing his company’s positive experience using the mass balance approach to certify recycled plastics used in their biochemical products.
A panel of certification bodies was also held to address the topic of how ISCC PLUS auditing works. Their representatives gave attendees a detailed explanation of the auditing process and demonstrated the need to further scale up auditing capacities as the demand for certifications (and re-certifications) grows.
In addition, the afternoon session featured the topic of greenhouse gases and life cycle assessment and how it can be connected to the mass balance approach. This was followed by an introduction and updates on the increasing demand for the carbon footprint assessment, applied under ISCC, from Dr Jan Henke. He provided insight into how ISCC’s Carbon Footprint Certification makes it possible to assess the environmental impact of products, independent of feedstock.
Across the board, stream 1’s talks provided attendees with the latest updates on regulatory frameworks, value chain experiences and marketing strategies for ISCC PLUS.
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Stream 2: Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF)
Stream 2 started with the latest updates on SAF certifications, followed by a presentation by one of our speakers, who explored his company’s practical experiences with ISCC CORSIA. He guided the audience through his experience of becoming an ISCC Association member in June 2023, including the story of how the company worked together with a national paper supplier to use its forestry processing residue as a key feedstock for SAF.
Later in the afternoon, the focus shifted towards the future with a talk about Japan and the wider Asian marketplace’s path for advancing SAF in 2025. Japan currently holds the most ISCC CORSIA certificates in Asia. In addition, SAF supply chains in Japan are already ISCC CORSIA certified, using feedstock from used cooking oil and forestry processing residue.
During the session, the focus was on the region’s steadily increasing mandate for SAF and Japan’s plans to achieve a 10% SAF blend in its aviation sector by 2030. Stream 2 concluded with a panel discussion featuring all the session’s industry speakers about the future expectations of SAF in the Asia-Pacific marketplace. Attendees and speakers also shared their own experiences with ISCC CORSIA and positively reflected on their progress so far. All participating companies expect to scale up further with ISCC CORSIA. Regarding scaling up, a key question raised was how to cover large feedstock demand. Taking logistical challenges into account, a book and claim approach for SAF was also discussed.
After the day’s sessions, we invited our attendees and speakers to a networking event at Hotel Nikko. Dr Jan Henke and Dr Norbert Schmitz summarised each stream, and participants had the opportunity to connect with each other and share their thoughts on the day’s events.

Final remarks
Japan is a key country for ISCC. Approximately 90% of its 500+ certifications are with ISCC PLUS, which is expected to steadily increase in the future, in addition to the number of CORSIA and SAF certificates. With events like this, we aim to increase our regional presence to accommodate this expected growth and fully support our system users and certification bodies.
We would like to extend our gratitude to Control Union Japan, this event’s main sponsor, our additional sponsors, SGS and Mitsubishi Corporation, and steam sponsors, BITS and SCS Global, for making this event possible.
Of course, our final thanks go to our incredible speakers, who took the time to share their knowledge and experience with us, as well as the attendees who joined us.