UK names SAF and e-SAF projects to share £63mn funding

The UK government has named 17 sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and e-fuels projects to share £63mn ($85mn) grant funding in the third round of its advanced fuels fund (AFF).

The projects range in size from trials to commercial scale, and propose to use technologies incuding alcohol-to-jet (AtJ) or synthesis of CO2 and renewable hydrogen to make e-SAF (see table).

The UK gave the largest sum, £10mn, to US firm LanzaJet for its 80,000 t/yr SAF plant targeting 2028 start, which will exclusively supply to British Airways.

London granted £8mn to Riyadh-headquartered Alfanar for its Lighthouse Green Fuels project that aims to make more than 125,000 t/yr of SAF. Alfanar won £11mn and £8.7mn in the first and second rounds, respectively. Its start date has slipped to 2029 and costs have risen to £2bn from £1.5bn, the firm said last month.

Some projects could make SAF and e-SAF, such as Essar's project at Stanlow, which aims to use a combined 550,000 t/yr of e-methanol and biomethanol to make 200,000 t/yr of SAF products. It will use the funds for a pre-front-end engineering design (Feed) study and it plans a final investment decision in 2027, it said.

Nine grant winners will make at least some proportion of e-SAF, either directly from hydrogen or by converting e-methanol. This route is sometimes called power-to-liquid in the UK.

Of the e-SAF projects, the largest award went to UK start-up Carbon Neutral Fuels, which won £6mn for a project that aims to make 25,000 t/yr of e-SAF starting from 2031. The firm is starting Feed for the plant, it said.

The UK has now granted nearly £200mn to projects through the AFF scheme, with the third round building on the £80mn first round and £53mn second round.

The third-round grants can go towards engineering, procurement and construction, Feed studies, and pre-feed studies, but not to feasibility studies. The UK is separately developing a revenue certainty subsidy scheme for novel SAF and e-SAF production.

At least one UK-focused SAF project could stall having missed out on funding. The Gramm Consortium is considering "last-minute options" to keep a proposed 250,000 t/yr SAF plant in the UK and may re-locate to the US, the project's lead Alexander Peschkoff said.

With an increasing number of world governments setting SAF quotas, pressure is mounting to add more production pathways to avoid shortages. The UK and EU have gone furthest in this respect by adding separate e-SAF quotas to spur novel production routes. But there is much uncertainty about the best technologies to use. The UK is fast approaching the 2028 start for its e-SAF quota, while the EU's is due to start in 2030.

By Aidan Lea