The UK Department for Transport’s Advanced Fuels Fund has announced £53 million of funding to be split between nine Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) initiatives.
The latest round of funding – which is designed to help companies convert waste materials and by-products into fuels - will help ‘nine pioneering projects’ located around the UK: creating up to 10,000 green jobs by 2035 and boosting the economy by around £1.8 billion every year.
This year’s winning projects include a demo plant converting sawmill and forestry waste, and a commercial plant using power-to-liquid technology to convert CO2 and green hydrogen into plane fuel; estimated to be capable of creating a combined 70,000 tonnes of SAF a year. “The pieces of the puzzle are coming together but more work is needed, in particular to deliver the initial plants under construction by 2025,” Tim Alderslade, CEO of Airlines UK, said.
Project Speedbird – a joint partnership between Nova Pangaea Technologies (NPT), LanzaJet and British Airways (BA) – has been awarded £9 million in the latest funding round, following multi-million pound investments into the project earlier this year from International Airlines Group (IAG) and British Airways. Project Speedbird will produce 102 million litres of SAF a year (using a process which converts agricultural waste and wood residue feedstocks into second-generation biofuels) and its first commercial-scale production facility will run at full capacity by 2028.
An upcoming UK SAF mandate requires at least 10% of jet fuel to come from sustainable feedstocks by 2030. The latest round of Department for Transport funding will help the UK reach its production goals of up to 810,000 tonnes of SAF while driving down emissions and reducing costs for customers.
