UK counts on SAF for sustainable flying

UK Aviation Minister, Anthony Browne, who is also the Minister for the decarbonisation of transport, said today that the goal of the UK’s climate agenda was not to stop people flying but to incentivise cleaner travel habits. “We’ve made a very clear commitment to cutting transport emissions to correct the planet but we want to do it in a way that actually allows people to carry on travelling,” said Browne. “It is a binary choice. We could tell the public to fly less. We could stop different forms of flying – people going on holidays and business travel – or we could support the industry to fly more sustainably. This is what the government is absolutely clear about. We want to change fuels, not travel habits…I’d like to continue flying but I want to do it in a way that doesn’t damage the planet.” Browne was speaking at a London conference in support of the use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and, more importantly, in support of the UK’s nascent SAF production industry. Browne and the UK Government believe that SAF is key to unlocking that promise to allow the public to keep on flying. He also touched on the work the UK Jet Zero Council was doing on the use of hydrogen in aviation but also the need to modernise the airspace to increase efficiency but maintained that the switch to SAF remained “by far the overwhelming key to unlocking sustainable aviation”. The UK aims to have five SAF production facilities under construction by next year and has recently published a mandate to use 10% SAF in all commercial aviation flights by 2030. Browne noted that the mandate was very ambitious considering SAF usage in the UK currently accounts for just 1% of aviation fuel. Hazel Schofield, deputy head of low carbon fuels at the UK Department for Transport speaking at the same event, said that the UK’s SAF mandate will create a “long-term incentive to supply SAF by creating that level of demand” as well as “send a clear signal” to investors to develop SAF plants in the UK. The UK’s SAF mandate applies to jet fuel suppliers, which will be subject to annual targets of SAF production from 2025 increasing to 2040. The mandate excludes any crop-based biofuels and focuses only on biofuel derived from waste oils, recycled carbon fuels, low carbon hydrogen, and power-to-liquid (PtL) fuels. The latter is credited with very low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and so has a separate obligation under the mandate, providing the largest amount of savings but it also recognises the risks and uncertainties regarding the scaling up of this technology. The specific PTL obligation starting in 2028 is set at a low level of north 0.5%, and then gradually increasing up to 3.5% in 2040.