Govt ready to put money behind sustainable fuel push

However, the Financial Times – citing people familiar with the situation – reports that while the Department for Transport (DfT) is poised to get behind the effort, the department is yet to get the go-ahead from the Treasury.

The DfT is expected on Thursday (30 March) to endorse the findings of a report it commissioned into building a SAF industry, which is understood to be siding with the aviation sector’s view that subsidies will be necessary to incentivise SAF production.

SAF currently costs anything up to three times more to produce than regular jet fuel. It comes during a week in which the government’s Jet Zero Strategy has come under further scrutiny, it now facing the prospect of being taken to judicial review for failing to set sufficiently ambitious targets.

MORE: The burning issue: is travel really set up for a carbon-free future?

Ministers have come under increasingly intense pressure from the aviation sector, and wider travel community, to back SAF development, particularly given the government’s insistence five SAF plants would be under construction in the UK by 2025.

Last November, new research by the Business Travel Association made an impassioned case for urgent adoption of SAF, describing it as a "key facilitator" of travel’s journey to decarbonisation, one that would require government input to deliver at scale.

A week later, the chief executive of the government’s own Jet Zero Council, Emma Gilthorpe, speaking at the Airlines 2022 conference, said the industry would need "some form of price bridge" to secure the necessary investment required to scale up the UK’s SAF industry.