The UK government-funded SAF Clearing House, led by the Energy Institute at the University of Sheffield and supported by Ricardo UK, has been officially launched. It will provide advice and support to fuel producers on the development, testing, qualification and production of new fuels entering the aviation market. All new aviation fuels must meet strict performance standards before they can be qualified as safe to use in aircraft and must undergo stages of testing in accordance with industry recognised standards. The cost and complexity of testing can be a significant barrier to new fuels entering the market and to help overcome this, the UK SAF Clearing House will provide advice to producers on testing, guidance on testing facilities and support qualification. It is now accepting applications from producers for technical support and funding.

“It is great to see there is now a lot of activity in the development of SAF,” said Professor Chris Lewis from the University of Sheffield and the new Director of the UK SAF Clearing House. “However, the increase in a diverse range of raw materials and processes means a major shift in the industry, which is both an opportunity to reduce aviation emissions but also a challenge to get these increasingly diverse SAF products to market.

“The UK SAF Clearing House, in cooperation with the EU and US Clearing Houses, will provide technical advice and information, funding to support with testing, and help in understanding how the industry works, as well as helping producers engage with the industry in a positive way. We are delighted to announce we are open for business, so please do come and talk to us.”

The clearing house is receiving £700,000 ($870,000) in government funding, with another £5.35 million earmarked to support costs associated with fuel testing.

“The UK SAF Clearing House will accelerate the testing of fuels by streamlining the process, in order to help companies get the qualification for use they need,” said Natasha Robinson, Deputy Director of Low Carbon Fuels at the UK’s Department for Transport.

“It will reduce the bottleneck in testing, ensuring a greater availability of SAF from a diverse range of feedstocks, which will enable the UK to achieve its target of 10% SAF by 2030 and will also help with the creation of new jobs and skills in this innovative green sector.”

Added Anthony Browne, Minister for Aviation and Decarbonisation of Transport: “As the UK SAF industry goes from strength to strength, it’s important it also has the capabilities to test the fuel being made, making the transition from the labs to the sky faster and easier than ever before.”

Sujith Kollamthodi, Director of Policy, Strategy & Economics at engineering and environmental consultancy Ricardo, which is supporting the clearing house, said it would be a free-at-the-point-of-use service to support fuel producers, working in collaboration with other international clearing houses and also coordinate a programme of fuel qualification with the support of aerospace original equipment manufacturers.

The University of Sheffield’s Energy Institute hosts the Sustainable Aviation Fuels Innovation Centre (SAF-IC), which provides state-of-the-art facilities to test, certify and deploy new sustainable aviation fuels. It is a development hub for the research and scaling up of SAF, offering laboratory and testing space as well as coordination and networking facilities.

Photo: University of Sheffield Energy Institute

Christopher Surgenor

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Eight proposed sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) projects have been shortlisted by the UK’s Department for Transport (DfT) to share up to £15 million ($20m) in grant funding to support early-stage development of large-scale SAF production plants in the UK. All selected projects have the potential to reduce emissions by more than 70% on a lifecycle basis when used in place of conventional fossil jet fuel, said the DfT. The plants plan to produce jet fuel from a variety of sources including sewage; household and commercial waste; alcohol derived from wastes; and from captured atmospheric carbon dioxide. Organisations standing to gain from the funding include Velocys, Fulcrum BioEnergy, LanzaTech, Lanzajet, Advanced Biofuel Solutions, Alfanar Energy, Green Fuels Research, Nova Pangaea and Carbon Engineering, with a few of the projects shortlisted still at their feasibility stage.

Research carried out for the DfT indicates that by 2040 the SAF sector could generate between £0.7 billion and £1.66 billion a year for the UK economy, with potentially half of this coming from the export of intellectual property and the provision of engineering services. Between 5,000 and 11,000 green jobs could also be created across the nation and SAF production could also increase UK fuel security.

The eight projects shortlisted in the Green Fuels, Green Skies (GFGS) competition are:

• Advanced Biofuel Solutions Ltd – ABSL will work with a British refinery and engineering company to produce a detailed engineering design for a new facility in Cheshire, north-west England. The plant will use gasification and Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technology to convert 130,000 tonnes of waste a year into aviation fuel.
• Alfanar Energy Ltd – The company’s Lighthouse Green Fuels (LGF) project, located in Tees Valley, north-east England, will use gasification and FT technology to convert household and commercial waste into around 180 million litres of SAF and naphtha. The project is currently completing design optimisation work ahead of starting the front-end engineering design (FEED) stage by the end of 2021.
• Fulcrum BioEnergy Ltd – The Fulcrum NorthPoint project, being developed at the Stanlow Manufacturing Complex in north-west England, will convert residual waste into around 100 million litres of SAF using gasification and FT technology. Funding will support the FEED stage of project work.
• Green Fuels Research Ltd – A joint endeavour between Green Fuels, Petrofac and Cranfield University, the FIREFLY project aims to demonstrate and certify a technology route to SAF from sewage sludge. Funding will support the project’s pre-FEED development stage.
• LanzaTech UK Ltd – Funding will support the FEED stage of a proposed facility in Port Talbot, South Wales, which is expected to produce over 100 million litres of SAF per year, using ethanol from biogenic wastes and industry flue gases.
• LanzaTech UK Ltd and Carbon Engineering – Funding will support a feasibility study into producing 100 million litres of SAF per year using Carbon Engineering’s direct air capture (DAC) technology, and hydrogen from water electrolysis to convert into SAF using Lanzatech’s gas fermentation and LanzaJet’s alcohol-to-jet technology. Project members include British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.
• Nova Pangaea Technologies (UK) Ltd – Along with British Airways and LanzaJet, the feasibility project will study the optimal design to construct a facility that produces more than 100 million litres of SAF a year using UK woody residues.
• Velcocys Projects Ltd – The funding will support progress towards FEED of the Altalto project being developed by Velocys and British Airways to build a commercial waste-to-SAF plant in Immingham, north-east England, using gasification and FT technology.

The eight projects are understood to be assured of funding with the amounts to each to be announced very shortly and subject to contract. The bulk of the funding will go to those projects in the pre-FEED or FEED phase with around £2 million expected to be awarded to those in their feasibility stage. The GFGS funding period is a fixed term from August to the end of March 2022.

Sean Doyle, CEO of British Airways, which is involved in four of the projects, commented: “We’re determined to transform the sustainability of our industry and this potential GFGS government funding is critical in helping us to show the feasibility of building SAF plants. These plants would be a game-changer for our industry, not only delivering SAF but also creating many hundreds of highly skilled jobs while increasing economic growth around the UK.”

Henrik Wareborn, CEO of Velocys, which benefited from funding under the government’s £20 million F4C competition held in 2017, said: “We welcome this new funding as it will help bring Altalto closer to the production of SAF. The GFGS initiative highlights the importance of building SAF facilities throughout the country that will help the UK not only to meet the targets set but also make a quantifiable impact on climate change.”

Added Jimmy Samartzis, CEO of US-based LanzaJet, which is partnering on one of the shortlisted projects with British Airways and Nova Pangaea, said: “Together, we are grateful to the Prime Minister and DfT for their support in advancing the production of SAF in the UK.”

The Green Fuels Research (GFR) project with Petrofac and Cranfield University will demonstrate an integrated route to SAF using sewage sludge as feedstock and encompasses engineering design and construction of a UK demonstration plant capable of generating the quantities of fuel to allow certification to international standards. This in turn, says GFR, will lead to a first-of-a-kind commercial refinery and roll-out to several locations where airports, pipeline terminals and wastewater treatment works are in close proximity. The company says around 53 million tonnes per annum of untreated sewage sludge are collected in the UK from about 8,500 wastewater treatment works.

Commenting on the competition announcement, Green Fuels CEO James Hygate said: “We’re delighted to have this opportunity to prove the environmental and commercial viability of the FIREFLY route, which integrates several existing technologies into a sustainable industrial process. Among many advantages, FIREFLY will use fully biogenic feedstock which will emit no fossil carbon, won’t contribute to deforestation or compete with food production, and will not rely on imports with long, high-emission supply chains. And perhaps most importantly, we expect to demonstrate exceptional carbon savings, meaning this is potentially a very fast route to decarbonising aviation that won’t rely on as yet unknown technologies.”

The competition has been managed by consultants Ricardo and once the funding has been distributed, it will monitor the eight projects on behalf of the DfT.

“We have been amazed by the diversity and creativity of the entries,” said Alexandra Humphris-Bach, Ricardo Principal Consultant. “All the selected projects have a clear potential to produce SAF capable of reducing emissions by more than 70% on a lifecycle basis, when used in place of a conventional fossil jet fuel.”

The UK’s Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, said: “Aviation will be central to our future growth and plans to build back greener from the pandemic, which is why we have invested over £20 million in the past year to decarbonise the sector in line with our world-leading net zero targets.

“With less than 100 days to go until COP26, we’re ramping up our efforts even further to help companies break ground on trailblazing waste to jet fuel plants and put the UK at the forefront of international SAF production.”

Photo: British Airways is involved in four of the eight shortlisted projects

The UK government has launched a £15 million ($21m) ‘Green Fuels, Green Skies’ competition to support early-stage development of UK sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plants with grant funding. Specifically targeted are projects undergoing a front end engineering design (FEED) stage in their development lifecycle and will prioritise those projects closest to the development of first-of-a-kind (FOAK) commercial-scale SAF plant. The competition will also be open to projects outside this scope and will allocate up to £2 million in funding to projects at the feasibility stage of project development. The competition is part of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ‘Ten point plan for a green industrial revolution’ unveiled in November. The announcement coincides with the second meeting of the Jet Zero Council, set up by the government last year in partnership with industry and others to stimulate net-zero emissions flight by mid-century through the development of new aviation fuels and technologies. Heathrow Airport COO Emma Gilthorpe has been appointed CEO of the Council, with a brief to extend its reach with key stakeholders across the sector and drive forward aviation decarbonisation. Meanwhile, the government is to provide £5.5 million in funding towards modernisation of UK airspace.

Commenting after the Council meeting, UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: “As the aviation sector emerges out of the pandemic and looks towards recovery over the coming months, we must put our environmental commitments at the centre of everything we do – so not only do we build back better, we also build back greener. That’s why we’re stepping up our work on the Council, recruiting new members and launching pioneering efforts to ensure we continue to lead the world by example and deliver on our ambitious net-zero targets.”

Added Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, who co-chairs the Council with Shapps, said: “The meeting demonstrates the vital collaboration between government and industry that will make zero-emission flights a reality. Britain’s aerospace sector is at the centre of our plans to build back greener from the pandemic. We are committed to supporting its recovery and investing in green tech to take us closer to zero-carbon take-off.”

One of the objectives of the Jet Zero Council is to accelerate SAF delivery by supporting investment in FOAK SAF plants, supporting R&D of new pathways and to drive down production costs through upscaling and innovation. The ‘Green Fuels, Green Skies’ (GFGS) competition is being run by the Department for Transport (DfT) in partnership with E4tech and Ricardo Energy & Environment, who were also responsible for the Future Fuels for Freight and Flight competition that was launched in 2017 and had applications for funding from the Velocys Altalto waste-to-jet project and the LanzaJet SAF from waste-based ethanol project.

The new competition follows on from a DfT-commissioned study by E4tech and Ricardo to assess the feasibility of a grant-funded competition and the types of funding mechanisms that could help support FOAK commercial SAF plant development in the UK. The study concluded there was a pool of UK and international developers that could build such plants but technology risk, high capital costs and uncertainty on the monetary value of policy support meant there were key barriers that needed to be overcome. It found that FOAK commercial plants could cost £600-700 million ($830-$970m) to build, which required government to “think big”, with policy measures to provide sufficient revenue certainty to investors to make projects financially viable.

The study indicates a UK SAF market could generate between £700m and £1.66bn in gross value added (GVA) to the UK economy, with potentially half of this being generated from the export of IP and the provision of engineering services, and create between 5,000 and 11,000 green jobs. Replacing imported kerosene with domestically produced SAF would also increase fuel security and have a net positive impact on the UK’s balance of payments.

The competition sets a number of objectives for projects to receive financial support:

• Technology demonstration: materially progress a project towards FOAK commercial production of an eligible SAF pathway.
• Fuel production: materially develop a project with the capability to produce commercially significant volumes of SAF, including for the purposes of attaining certification.
• Commercial potential: materially develop a strategy for commercialising the technology and the products from the project, demonstrating the significant value to the UK.
• Emissions reduction: demonstrate the potential for GHG reductions of a technology pathway compared to a fossil fuel equivalent.
• Project execution: bring together a team with the necessary expertise and experience to deliver the project according to its objectives.

Application forms for the competition are available to download from the Ricardo website on March 24 and the closing date for applications is May 31. The DfT expects to announce the winners and the start of the funding period at the end of July, with the funding period for winning projects due to end on March 31, 2022.

“This funding is a positive step closer to getting a British sustainable aviation fuel industry off the ground,” commented Adam Morton, Chair of the UK cross-industry group Sustainable Aviation. “But if the UK is serious about becoming a world leader in SAF production and supply, the government must accelerate its support for this nascent industry by complementing this funding with the right policies to support the commercialisation of SAF at scale, as we have set out. With a world-leading SAF industry and innovations in electric and hydrogen aircraft, Britain can become a Jet Zero pioneer.”

Under another initiative, ‘Future Flight Challenge’, the UK government has committed £125 million ($173m) of funding over four years, matched by £175 ($243m) million from industry, to develop green flight – such as all-electric aircraft and deliveries by drones – by advancing electric and autonomous flight technologies. Project 2ZERO announced plans this week to use their £2.4 million share of this funding to demonstrate flights of six- and 19-seat hybrid-electric planes. The project will validate the use of electric and hybrid aircraft on regional routes, showing the potential to decarbonise aviation while supporting regional connectivity.

Following an independent review into UK transport connectivity, the government has said a consultation will be launched shortly on aviation tax reform that will include options to change Air Passenger Duty (APD) for domestic flights, such as reintroducing a return leg exemption or creation of a new lower domestic rate. It will also consider increasing the number of APD international distance bands as well as mandating the use of sustainable aviation fuels. As some European governments move towards closing down short domestic routes in favour of train travel, Prime Minister Johnson said he wanted to cut APD on domestic flights to support UK connectivity.

Asked by BBC Radio this week on how a cut in APD on domestic flights would square with the government’s net-zero commitment, Transport Secretary Shapps said: “We want to do both and we’ll do that, for example, by using sustainable aviation fuel mandates in future on domestic flights to remove carbon.”

The government has also announced funding of £5.5 million ($7.6m) to support modernisation of the UK airspace to reduce journey times, pollution and delays. It said the funding would aid the industry as it develops and evaluates new flight routes, and play a role in the UK CAA’s Airspace Modernisation Strategy when travel restrictions are lifted.

“As an island nation, our airspace is vital in keeping us connected to the rest of the world,” said Aviation Minister Robert Courts. “Modernising our ‘sky motorways’ could put an end to the days of circling the airport waiting for a landing slot, improving efficiency, and leading to flights that are quicker, quieter and greener than ever before.”

Responding, the UK Airport Operators Association’s Chief Executive, Karen Dee, said: “Airspace modernisation will be essential for aviation to build back better, so that a recovery of 2019 passenger levels does not come with 2019 noise impacts and carbon emissions. We look forward to working with the government and the Airspace Change Organising Group to deliver modernisation and to help achieve aviation’s net zero by 2050 commitment.”

The government says it has pledged around £7 billion ($9.7m) for the aviation sector since the start of the pandemic “while working to develop a framework for the restart of safe and sustainable international travel.”

Photo: Heathrow Airport