The SAF Podcast with James Hygate, Firefly Green Fuels

 On this week's episode of The SAF Podcast  we chat with James Hygate, CEO of Firefly Green Fuels. James unveils the fascinating world of hydrothermal liquefaction technology and how it can transform sewage into bio crude and biochar, opening the gateway to a new era of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production.

As we navigate through the conversation, James sheds light on his background in Biofuels, including making his own refinery in his house when he was younger, Firefly's  business model that involves converting sewage sludge currently provided by  three  water utility facilities into bio crude. He also provides a sneak peek into their commercialisation timeline and the looming challenges in aligning sustainability with commercial viability.

But what good is technology and business acumen without sound policy and abundant feedstock? In our final segment, we delve into the role of policy frameworks and feedstock in the biofuels arena. From the abundance of sewage sludge and its potential as a resource, to the frustrations with policy discussions, James gives us a comprehensive view. We then switch gears to India as we discuss securing investments and offtake agreements for SAF production in this fast-growing economy. So, tune in and gear up for a deep dive into the future of SAF production.

Find out more about Firefly Green Fuels here: https://flyfirefly.uk/

Find out more about SAF Investor and our upcoming London conference in February 2024 here: https://www.safinvestor.com/event/142346/saf-investor-london/

If you enjoy this episode catch our recent discussion with Steven Fance, Cultiv8 Hemp Solutions where the benefits of Hemp as a feedstock are discussed: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2202964/13842745

Hosted and produced by: Oscar Henderson, SAF Investor

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Hi and welcome to the SAF podcast. This week we're delighted to be joined by James Higate, the CEO of Firefly Greenfuels, based in the UK. James has been looking at biofuels for a long time, including making his own biofuel refinery in his house, and now he's recently looked into using sewage as a feedstock for SAF production. On the episode we discuss the benefits of sewage as a feedstock, the commercialization plans for Firefly, the recent investment by Whiz Air, as well as what makes India such an interesting prospect for SAF production. We hope you enjoy it, james. Thanks so much for joining us. Just before we get into it, I just thought we'd get into your background a bit before Firefly, before Greenfuels. So if you could just take me through how you got involved in biofuels and your background in the industry, that would be great.

Speaker 2: 1:21

Yeah, sure, absolutely, I suppose.

Speaker 2: 1:23

From a very, very young age I've always had a keen interest in nature and the environment, so it's something that growing up.

Speaker 2: 1:31

I grew up in an area called Strouding, gloucestershire, but it's quite known to sort of greenies there, so it was something I could see that we were protecting. I ended up going off and studying zoology at university and it's actually at that point when I became particularly concerned about the impact of climate change. So even this was sort of mid-90s, we seemed to be relatively new, but we covered this whole thing about the climate change and the science behind it. It all looked very simple and the science was incredibly simple and fairly obvious that we had to move away from using fossil fuels, and really that drove me into the career that I'm in now. So when I left university I was keen to minimise my use of fossil fuels. So I actually did the obvious thing, which was to build a small biorefinery in my parents' garage when they weren't there and, to be fair, actually, if you know Stroud, that's actually kind of a. That's probably quite normal in that environment.

Speaker 1: 2:37

So where are we in Stroud now? Oh, there's, probably loads.

Speaker 2: 2:40

There's probably loads, but in sort of the early noughties there wasn't many. In fact, I think ours was probably the only one and it was really from a desire to move away from using fossil fuels myself, and actually that evolved and morphed into green fuels and sort of rolled on 20 odd years later and we've supplied waste oil to waste cooking oil, to biodegradable technology pretty much everywhere across the planet. So that was kind of the, I suppose, the background that got me into it. So it was driven from the want to actually to do something beneficial for the environment and really looking at SAF.

Speaker 2: 3:23

So SAF, we were probably looking at SAF at quite an early stage as well, because you could start to see the emergence of electric vehicles in sort of 2007, 2008, and you know, which made perfect sense for the road transports, but you could actually see that the challenge would be in aviation. So we've actually been looking around sustainable aviation fuels for about 15 years now with you know, but trying to find routes that would work. And there's a lot of the challenges in biofuels of you know abroad. But there are simple things that you need to address are is the feedstock there? Is it truly green, is it truly waste material and that kind of led us into the work we've been doing for the last few years around Firefly and actually now into Firefly as a you know, actually as a proper company going to commercialise this new route.

Speaker 1: 4:14

So you're looking at sewage as a feedstock and using hydrothermal liquefaction as the refining process. Do you just want to take us through what hydrothermal liquefaction is and how it works?

Speaker 2: 4:28

Yeah, absolutely Sure. So this is a completely new route to SAF. And the reason we're looking at hydrothermal liquefaction is when you look at a lot of biological materials and a lot of biological waste is they're full of water. So in truth, if you think, well, actually we're going to have to put loads of energy into drawing this and actually you know to, then you know, for example, go for a gasification process in FT or whatever. But actually hydrothermal liquefaction is quite interesting.

Speaker 2: 4:52

So water is, you know it's everywhere. But actually it's kind of a strange substance. You know, if you think things like you know, as it becomes a solid it becomes larger and can flow from the top. You know you can dissolve all sorts of things in it and actually it's such a small molecule it doesn't really make sense to its water. So it's kind of a weird.

Speaker 2: 5:11

It's a weird substance anyway, but actually it does start to act almost in a magical sort of fashion. When you put it under high temperatures and high pressures, so at that sort of that sort of those sorts of environments, it actually becomes quite reactive and it acts more as an aggressive chemical, breaking down materials that are in there. So it's a very good way to break down the complex sort of macromolecules you're having. You know, like you know, certain materials and other biological materials, and so in hydrothermal liquefaction we use the water to actually break down the material. That's there the results.

Speaker 2: 5:49

The results of that are you end up with a, the outputs of a bio crude, which is quite similar to a fossil crude, and a biochar. And a biochar has sort of the nutrients etc in the material that's come through but also has kind of likea fixed carbon content to it. If you think about it, actually it's not too dissimilar to what happens, you know, in geological terms, in the earth's crust, biological material over millions of millions of years. You know high pressures, moderate temperatures, and you then it breaks down into, you know, a fossil crude and a fossil you know, and coal. It's just that what we're doing is a process that, rather than spending millions of millions of years taking place, it happens in seconds.

Speaker 1: 6:30

So you've just basically got the cheat code to how theology works really.

Speaker 2: 6:36

Yeah, it's a. Really yeah, it's quite a. It's quite a. It is I've made it before but it's actually quite an elegant and magical process. You know, it's almost like a. It is more complicated than a pressure cooker, but it is almost like a pressure cooker and it's a very, it's a very good way to actually use the water for your advantage, and so that provides a, an efficient process to make these materials.

Speaker 2: 6:59

And the nice thing with these materials are especially with the. You know the bio crude it's. You know it's, it's a crude oil. It's basically a crude oil. So you've got 100 years of knowledge and experience in refining that can go into that. And when you start looking at, and so on, the investment case and the bankability of this, you can then talk to capitalists and sources and say, hey, I've got this, I've got this firefly crude and can you provide robust guarantees to sit around the refinery to be on the process of what we're going to get out of it, and that's something that can be done.

Speaker 2: 7:29

It is quite unusual. I think it should sort of clear. The good thing with sewage is it's a plentiful waste. You know it's everywhere. We're all contributing to the supply every day, but actually we take it at the very end of the waste wall treatment process. So, although it's a waste, it's incredibly consistent and that, again, is very unusual from from a waste material. So for us, having looked at and worked in the biofuels industry for 20 odd years, it's suddenly that the challenge areas that we found around feedstock seem to disappear with this process. So yeah, it's, it's. It is exciting, it's the sort of thing you know really getting us out of bed every day to make this happen.

Speaker 1: 8:10

So I think it's. It's quoted that there's about 57 million tons of sewage in the UK, roughly yes. So obviously heifer is the heifer process is the most sort of commercialized and the most widely available method of making staff at the moment. How much you know staff could you create from 57 million tons of sewage? You know what's the? How big is the scalability of this Sure?

Speaker 2: 8:44

sure, so it's worth remembering. So there's 57 million tons of sewage. The vast majority of that is water and we take, so that's what goes into the wastewater treatment system. What comes out of the wastewater treatment system is a product called biosolids. So this is a almost like a soil like material that is currently spread on the land and that there's about eight, eight and a half million tons in the UK.

Speaker 2: 9:12

So, looking at converting that into into fuel, that eight and a half million tons still has a relatively high water content, but you could produce around about 600,000 tons of sustainable fuels, of which about 270,000 tons of that would be staff. So if you look at the you know the 10% mandate in the UK and based on, say, last year's jet fuel consumption, actually this route alone could actually meet half that mandate. So it is. It is pretty significant. Uk uses an awful lot of jet fuel. When you start looking at other countries, it's actually a you know it's significantly more that can be produced. So we're yeah, we're very excited about the potential from this route, because it is a true waste. It's a material that's there, that there is. You know that there is nothing really useful happening with it at the moment.

Speaker 1: 10:06

So looking sort of towards your sort of commercialization plans, what's your sort of model that you're sort of working towards? Are you looking sort of own operate staff refineries? Or are you going to sort of license out technology to people or give them sort of, as you mentioned, the refined products that then the refinered staff house you? What's your sort of future business model looking like?

Speaker 2: 10:32

Sure. So we've looked at this quite carefully because and this is where a lot of the work we've done status around actually making sure whatever business models we do in the overall financial model for it is as bankable as it possibly can be. You know, big, big plus point at the start of it is we've got a pretty low value material that's going into it which has a knock on effect, so the fuel is consistent and there's loads of it. So when we look at this, it's also, you know this is something that can kind of happen anywhere, and you know there is sewage everywhere on, you know, everywhere on the planet. So our aim would be to be able to, you know, maximize the impact by doing this everywhere we possibly can.

Speaker 2: 11:10

So, looking at our business model, the plan would be to have a effectively a licensing model, and so Firefly would effectively provide a license to project companies operating the plans of which Firefly, which would also have a stake in, and so in the UK we are the first facility we've mapped out and plans would would would take sludge from three of the 11 utilities, and we're engaged with all utilities at the moment. There's a lot of interest and we think there's probably potential for three of those those facilities in the UK. Each one of those facilities would be able to process around about 100,000 tons of bio crude and then you get about 100,000 tons of fuels at the end of it, of which you know sort of 45% of that staff. But again, it's kind of. You know, that's just looking at the UK. When you start looking elsewhere in the world, you know you the potential is is just phenomenal.

Speaker 1: 12:08

And what's your timeline for looking at commercialising on those UK-based products?

Speaker 2: 12:14

Yeah, so we are. At the moment. The plan is to have our first-of-a-kind commercial plant in operation probably in 2029. That's it. So it's not going to happen tomorrow because they're still, you know, they're scared that we've got to do and we've got it going. But there are plans to be able to get it in operation before the end of the decade and we think that's quite realistic.

Speaker 2: 12:36

The fuel because this is a completely new route to SAF. We actually have to have the fuel qualified first of all. So that's the process that we're going through at the moment. But all the indications are that it looks, you know, the end product is so close to a fossil jet. It looks likely that it should be able to, you know, to go through a qualification process without too much trouble. But from there we have to build a demonstration facility to demonstrate the HDL plant part of the process, actually, looking at the hydro-treatment part that really is all in gas stuff. And so we've now got confidence with our other licence order we're using and they were confident as that actually they can go straight to a commercial scale plant and provide the guarantees that we would need to finance that. So, yeah, 2028, 2029. If we can make it sooner, we will.

Speaker 1: 13:25

Is that something that is quite appealing? This as a pathway If you've got you know the treatment process is coming from oil and gas. That sort of element of technology risk is massively mitigated by that, because obviously it's a big concern from investors about the new nature of a lot of the SAF technologies coming through. Is that a big bonus to what you guys are looking to do?

Speaker 2: 13:49

Yeah, absolutely. You know that's the. Of course, there are technical challenges in our route and in other routes, but actually the real challenges are actually getting these things built, and so that's why it's taken us such a long time to come up with something that we believe are wow, actually, this really really does work. So having a business model that actually stands up works, having a fee stock that's available so the fee stock we're using biosolids that's currently spread on the land in the UK and that's likely to be banned in the near future. So the utilities are actually looking for an outlet for this material. So it is something that's there.

Speaker 2: 14:26

It's not that we're taking that from somewhere else and it is super-duper consistent as a waste material, as it possibly can be. So that's one big thing. We know the materials there. We know where it's available, down to every kilo, because it's completely regulated by off-watt. Then, when you look at the downstream side, it is basically a small refinery, the hydrothermal liquefaction part of it. This is an emerging technology. This is something that is being used. So there's a plan, for example, processing plastics with it. It's being used in a few applications. There is some scale up that needs to happen with it, but it's not scary complicated technology with lots and lots of process steps. So we're comfortable that when we have the demonstration part of the HTL built here in the UK to actually show the sludge being made into bio-crued, that's kind of the last piece of the puzzle to actually get the whole lot put together into one lot financing for these projects.

Speaker 1: 15:35

You mentioned the feedstock regulation and off-watt regulating things pretty tightly. Is that something you want to see grow across the SAF industry and biofuels, because it's a discussion that comes up a lot about where feedstock comes from. You have a lot of debates about palm oil being used in heifer refineries. Is sort of the close regulation of feedstock something you'd like to see talked about more in more earnest sort of develop of it?

Speaker 2: 16:10

I think it has to be. I think it's crucially important that we're all out here trying to solve a really big problem, and so in solving that problem, you do not want to be causing other problems, and so that's a yeah. It's clear that whatever process you do should be as sustainable as possible. The challenge is having something that's as sustainable as possible but also bankable. With clever chemistry, you can kind of turn pretty much anything into anything if you want to, but whether that's ever going to be commercially viable or not is a difficulty, and that's again the thing that's really attracting us about this. This feedstock is everywhere. It's very difficult to say, oh, this is a bad use for sewage sludge. Well, actually it isn't, because there isn't really another beneficial use for it. It's just a big load of biogenic carbon that we can turn into in the jet fuel and other fuels. So why?

Speaker 1: 17:17

So I mean you say feedstocks everywhere and I think everyone will agree that I will believe you. I don't think there's any question about feedstock availability for this. So does that mean that policy frameworks have more influence in making a decision for where you might produce? Because obviously there are a lot of people discussing about feedstocks, doing their assessments of whether feedstocks for certain pathways are available in certain locations. If this feedstocks everywhere, surely policy and policies like the IRA in America or and so on, make it more. They have more weight in incentivising you to go and produce there as opposed to somewhere where there isn't so much incentivisation.

Speaker 2: 18:05

Yes, it is certainly driven by policy, but again, because of the material we're looking at, it's from both sides. So the wastewater industry globally is typically looking at how to deal with these materials. So it's also you've got drivers from that side. As long, as well as the sap usage, the products of the process are a bio crude which is kind of like about a third of your dry weight material in or two thirds of the material coming in is a biochar and that biochar potentially has significant value as a fertilizer. It's got all the nutrients that's in the sewage, also in sequestering carbon. So we are certainly driven by policy, but we're not completely beholden to it. So the business model that we developed it is absolutely it needs to be incentivised in one way or another, but it kind of looks quite strong anyway, especially if you can get values from these other materials.

Speaker 2: 19:08

We're keen to build the first facility in the UK. For well, we're here, which one thing. We also have a fairly solid offtake agreement, which is another thing we put a lot of work into over the last year, which would be ideal supply in the UK or Europe. But you're right, the IRA in the US is a really compelling reason to build a plant there. It really is. You look at it and think, wow, from a financing point of view, having that and writing your facility, it de-rits it massively. But clearly this can happen in the US and actually can happen in the US at a larger scale. But we're keen to get the first plant here. We'll see what happens. The second one will be in the US.

Speaker 1: 20:02

So on that, do you find it at all frustrating? Because we talk to a lot of producers and a lot of them get frustrated at how long and drawn out policy discussions can be. I know in the UK they're looking at implementation in 2025, laying down the line. Is that something that frustrates you?

Speaker 2: 20:26

I think generally, as an entrepreneur, I'm impatient. We'd like to see this happen tomorrow. You'd like to see policy align with it. You think there's such a massive issue here, why can't everyone pull their fingers out and make this happen? So, yes, there is some frustration for it, but actually what we're talking about policy in the UK with the blend mandate and actually having the support mechanism aligned with you know, it's similar to the renewable transfer fuel obligation, which is something we're used to to see industry move forward and kind of makes it quite compelling and makes sense, especially for a process route that can be actually looks pretty profitable. So from that side, I think, yes, it's frustrating all these things, frustrating because they take a long time, but actually what's coming out of it is quite good.

Speaker 2: 21:18

It would be good to see something similar to the IRA here. I just don't think that can happen, unfortunately. But we have, you know, from the same fuel. We are going to have better policies within the EU and Europe than the US. So you know it swings around about it. If you can get your first facility funded here, actually it's a better place to be doing it and you've kind of got to look past that. You kind of say, right, this is something we want to do everywhere. Do you know what? Let's get it done here. Let's have it let's. You know, let's utilize the support that's there to make it happen here. But, yeah, let's do it everywhere else in the world as quickly as we can afterwards.

Speaker 1: 22:04

But the UK, I mean there are. There is stuff going on in the UK Recently they did the advanced fuels fund just announced a second window of grants that went out. Green fuels received the green skies investment from the Department of Transport. So how important was that in sort of the early stages in looking at in fireflies development? Was that critical?

Speaker 2: 22:30

Yeah, it was. It was incredibly important. I think this is really good. I think that you're having grant funding for these emerging technologies because, kind of like, you know this isn't a, you know it really isn't a, you know there isn't going to be one solution for this. There's going to be many, many solutions. We've all got to win. All of these things have got to happen.

Speaker 2: 22:48

So, actually, the green fuels green skies grant that we received was incredibly useful for supplementing our own investment into this. So we put quite a lot of time and money into developing Southwere. We're lucky to have an existing business that enables us to do so. But it, you know, actually having this, this grant funding, allowed us to, you know, optimize the process, you know, build strong relationships with our EPC contractors. So here we're working with Petra fact but also, almost more importantly, it enabled us to build a very, very strong business model of how this would be commercialized, moving forward, and to have something as bankable as possible and build to go this offtake etc.

Speaker 2: 23:30

And when you look at it, actually the return on investment to the UK tax pay has been pretty good to date. So I think we've got £2 million worth of grant funding that resulted in in part a £5 million in investment from Wissair Hungary, an offtake agreement, which is, you know, we actually managed to build a floor price into this offtake agreement, so it is bankable as far as it can be. It's for £525,000. So, you know, the value of it's going to be upwards of £750 million. So this is a yeah, you know.

Speaker 2: 24:06

So this is a good use, I think, of taxpayers' money. So, you know, having, when you start looking at other levels of government support, actually having something that can help underwrite the first for kind plants, is really is really good. But there will always be a point where you will bump up against the commercial reality, you know, is the material there Is there, you know, is this actually going to be a viable business? And you've got to know that it is to actually get through. So this grant funding gets you kind of past those stage gates that would otherwise be difficult and costly for you to get through and hopefully prevents, you know, losing money in, you know, large scale projects that may not work down the line. So for us, no, it was fantastic and I don't think we would be in the position we are today if it wasn't for that money.

Speaker 1: 24:57

You mentioned your Wizz Air investment earlier this year. How did that come about?

Speaker 2: 25:03

Yeah, so it was great really. We ended up talking to Wizz Air, primarily about an offtake. So Wizz Air, we're on our radar and they are obviously very fast-growing, ultra-low-cost airline. They're also, per passenger, the greenest technically, per CO2 emissions, the greenest airline on the planet, so they are a good partner for us moving forward. So we met with them, regardless to a looking at an offtake for the fuel. We found that there was a real meeting of minds, not only for, you know, for this first project, but for the potential growth of the business, and quite shortly afterwards it then turned into a. You know, actually we're quite interested in investing in this venture and supporting you for the next ages, and it's been a really, really positive experience. You know, we've got a fantastic, fantastic director on our board from Wizz who is, you know, is very good at looking at the strategic vision for the company as well. And, yeah, and certainly the investment we've got has been is helping us get through. It's basically there to get us through the qualification process, which is what we're using it for at the moment, and it's yeah, it's doing its job.

Speaker 2: 26:15

But the offtake, the offtake is big and it's a very robust offtake agreement. It isn't just like an MOU or we're going to take if you make it, we'll take your fuel. Actually, it is somewhat binding. It does have floor prices. Have these things in there to make it as useful as we can. It's worth noting we've been working with one of the very large investment banks from the start with all of this to make sure anything we do, you know, provides comfort and support for when we actually have to get the very, very large sums of money to build these plants. And I think that's key to be doing that from the very, very early stage with any of these ventures, because you know that's where it's going to live or die.

Speaker 1: 26:54

Do you think it's interesting? You mentioned the robustness of offtake agreements, because I think yeah, so that's really interesting. So do you think that, in a way, is actually potentially, in the long term, going to be something more important than the investment in a sense, because that's what a lot of investors are looking at in terms of signalling that there is strong demand and when you come to get that big investment, do you think that's going to be the big driver?

Speaker 2: 27:26

I think it is. I think having something that. So it isn't for all of our fuel, it is for a percentage output from the first facility, and we wanted to do that. We wanted to make it big enough that it was actually useful to go and say, hey, do you know what, if we make this stuff, there's someone who's going to buy it, but not so big that we weren't able to supply the rest of the fuel.

Speaker 2: 27:45

Because I think the reality is, you know, saf is going to be in very, very short supply for the foreseeable future, and so actually having this offtake is, yes, it's good and, yes, the value that sits behind that is, yeah, is it worth more than investment?

Speaker 2: 28:03

Well, it depends on the stage of business. Certainly, it's going to be worth more than the line when the fuel is qualified, but actually we need the investment to get the fuel qualified. So it was, yeah, exactly, both go hand in hand, but yeah, no, it was something we did spend a lot of time and a lot of time with our lawyers on both sides. Actually, again, this was a very collaborative process to actually come up with something that worked really well for both parties, and I think that's what we've got. So we're very, very happy with what we put in place with this and can see how we could replicate this in other locations. So, for example, this is good for the UK and certainly good for the first plant, but we might want to be looking at yet something in the US, maybe something in Japan, maybe something elsewhere with other airlines in the future.

Speaker 1: 29:00

It's interesting. You say it's you sort of stressed it's not for all the fuel production. The offtake will be there, because you look at some Land's Adjets project Speedbird 100% of that staff is going to British Airways and they're quite sort of certain that that's going to be the case. Are you looking for other offtake? Are you pursuing other offtake agreements for the rest of the fuel? Do you think having multiple airlines signing offtake agreements from the same plants are a benefit rather than just having one for the whole supply?

Speaker 2: 29:33

I think there's things around about it. I think, in our case, actually having multiple offtake rooms almost as a backup yes, potentially are good. I think the evidence be where this becomes bankable. Generally, the business model we've got looks great. It looks like this is going to be a very good way to produce staff at a realistic price. That comes down to the feedstock being not worth very much money. We are building in a price of the feedstock in here small, but currently the utilities do get paid a very small amount of money from farmers to get a spread on the field. So, realistically, you want to be offering more than that to make sure you secure as much of it as possible.

Speaker 2: 30:19

I think for us, yes, we are going to be looking for other offtakes, but I think if we don't have to, it's better to be able to sell someone on the open market, because the reality is this is going to be in short supply. However you look at it, what is the value of your SAF? The value of the fossil fuel plus whatever carbon penalty is on top of that. Yes, you go to Europe. Is there a ceiling on that? I'm not sure. So, if you can get your plant built and maximise the value in the products that you're producing. That's something you should be doing as long as the airline is getting a benefit from it and saving over other options that they're offsetting their carbon.

Speaker 1: 31:13

That's so interesting that you're. I think you're slightly different in the sense that you're saving some for the open market to work. I think lots of people are so using offtakes as a tool to get finance. In a sense, they're offtaking all the fuel that they're predicting to be produced and using that as leverage to either get more investment from the airlines or from investment banks as well as demand indicators. So I think it's interesting that you've got your business model without 100% offtake. Agreement is so strong that you don't have to worry about that and you can sort of divide your time a bit more with that.

Speaker 2: 31:57

I think potentially. Hey, things may change, but as it stands, I do like the idea that there should be something that's available for the open market on here, and it's interesting almost to see how that was. That's how it works with other biofuels projects and other ones that we've been involved with, where, yes, you may have an offtake for a proportion of it, but there will also be a proportion that will go on to the open market and that's potentially where you can win more. You may lose more, I think in this market. Well, unless something quite dramatic happens over the next few years, there is not going to be enough SAF to meet the demand. So the upside looks better than the downside to me.

Speaker 1: 32:42

Yeah, I want to pivot slightly now because I think we've done a lot on some of your process and this stuff, which is fascinating. But you also spend a lot of time in India, yeah, and you speak there a lot, and I just wonder what your thoughts are in terms of India and SAF, because I think it's such a huge potential market that you don't see so much noise coming out at the moment. I just want to know what you're doing, what you're doing going over there, what you think of India and SAF, etc.

Speaker 2: 33:15

Yeah, so it's actually. But why do I get to India? India? Well, for many reasons, is a truly wonderful place to go. In general, you go there and it's just amazing to see how this fast-paced economy is evolving over time. You turn up, you feel alive. It's always going to buzz. You go to India. It's a great place to be With my Greenfields hat on.

Speaker 2: 33:36

We're also establishing a number of waste cooking oil to buy diesel plants across the country to supply road transport, and that's the first one built about to be launched as well, as I was there last week and it'll be a number of those that are going. So great potential from that side of the business as well. And that's providing fuel to go into a blend for road use. When you look at aviation, you're absolutely right. There is, especially with the route that we're looking at, 1.4 billion people. That's quite a lot of sewage. That's there. I don't really want to say how much. There is a lot. Believe me, it's a lot. And actually, when you look at the infrastructure that's going in place. So, focusing on Mumbai, mumbai is currently establishing seven large wastewater treatment works to actually bring that water treatment up to the same sort of stands we see in the UK. So there will be vast quantities of biosolids coming out to the ends of this process.

Speaker 2: 34:40

And when we looked at it and said, okay, well, okay, let's, let's, let's work, it's kind of quite easy to model how much SAF you can make with our process. So you know, the average person basically produces between 20 and 25 kilos of biosolids per year. Go for the process, blah, blah, blah. Actually that that works out at about four litres of SAF. So if you want to, so it's quite and it's kind of standard. We all, you know, we all digest the food the same way and so it's not. It's quite easy to model and work out how it's going to do.

Speaker 2: 35:11

So you start looking at that and you look at what the usage would be, say, at Mumbai International Airport. We're like, wow, actually 25 million people in Mumbai, this usage at the airport. If we could convert all of that, you know, all of that sludge down the line into into into bio crew to then produce bi-naptor and SAF, that SAF could actually, it looks like it should be able to contribute to 80 percent of the jet fuel usage of the airport, not SAF usage of the jet fuel usage of the airport because of that high concentration of people there. So for us, we think, well, actually this is somewhere where we should be doing this and we're talking about, you know, these are projects are going to be happening in maybe eight or nine years time.

Speaker 2: 36:00

What's it going to look like? What's the industry going to look like then? Are they going to be mandates and incentives in India and these other? And actually, yeah, they're probably will be. So, actually, you should be planning for the, for the future. So, anyway, yeah, so that's that's. That's that's why we're there. Plus, the food's great people are amazing and it's just a great place to go to.

Speaker 1: 36:19

I can't get over the 80 percent of jet fuel usage and yes, mad, yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:28

And when you look at the, you know it's a. You know this is all kind of theoretical because you probably won't capture all the biosolids etc. That are out there. But you look at this route and you look at it from 30,000 feet as a, as a global supply of SAF. Well, you know, with, with, with the world's population and bearing in mind vast majority don't fly, but each of these, each, each person's, effectively producing four, four litres a year of SAF, looking at the global availability of sewage and there would be potential to meet 10, to meet a global 10 percent SAF mandate below through this route.

Speaker 1: 37:13

So how long until you sort of fly over there with your firefly hat on, as it were.

Speaker 2: 37:19

Well, to be fair, I was kind of wearing that one a bit last week as well.

Speaker 1: 37:22

So no, we had there we had a few meetings about it Pretty much, pretty much Actually in this case.

Speaker 2: 37:34

Yeah, it's mind blowing. It's just mind blowing the potential just because of the, just because of the population, the population density around the cities, but also the speed of change and the speed of progress in India. It's amazing. It's an amazing place to spend time.

Speaker 1: 37:49

Amazing. I think that's everything. Thanks so much, James. That was amazing.

Speaker 2: 37:54

No, it's cool. Yeah, no, thanks Oscar.

Speaker 3: 37:56

Wow, you made it to the end. Thank you so much. You clearly are interested in sustainable aviation fuel and how it's reshaping aviation. If you like the podcast, you may also be interested in attending SAF Invest in London. It's on February the 27th and the 28th 2024, bringing together the whole ecosystem to find capital to change aviation. If you'd like more details, please check out SAF Investor. Thanks so much for listening. Bye.