The SAF Podcast

The SAF Podcast: Innovate UK Business Connect: Connecting SAF's dot to dot

• SAF Investor • Season 3 • Episode 9

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 In this episode of The SAF Podcast, Oscar sits down with Michelle Carter, Head of Transport at Innovate UK Business Connect, to explore the current state and future trajectory of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in the UK. With over a decade of experience in SAF, Michelle offers a unique lens into the evolution of the UK’s SAF ecosystem—from early-stage innovation to national mandates and public awareness. 

The conversation delves into the UK's position in the global SAF market, revealing that the country attracts just over 1% of global SAF investment, with a surprising 29% focused on power-to-liquid technology. Even more revealing is that domestic investment remains strikingly low compared to foreign capital pouring in from Europe and the United States. Michelle discusses the critical role of the UK SAF Clearing House in helping innovative technologies navigate regulatory landscapes and the importance of domestic versus imported production.

The episode highlights interesting contrasts between UK and international investment patterns, particularly examining Spain's success with operational SAF facilities. Michelle explains how government policies like the SAF mandate and renewable certainty mechanism aim to stimulate growth in domestic production, targeting 2% sustainable jet fuel by 2025 and 10% by 2030.

The conversation also covers international comparisons, such as Spain’s refinery-led approach, and why the UK still imports most of its SAF. We delve into public perception, noting that 70% of UK adults still don’t know what SAF is—highlighting the critical role of airlines, airports, and producers in improving consumer education. 

The regional variations in understanding—particularly how Wales demonstrated superior knowledge about waste-gas pathways due to local industry initiatives—highlight both the challenges and opportunities in consumer education. As Michelle notes, "If you communicate with the right narrative, people get it and they understand it."

Whether you are a UK local or from another geography, understanding the challenges and work being done in the UK, and across the globe is critical to decarbonise aviation globally. 

You can find both reports referred to in our discussion here: https://iuk-business-connect.org.uk/knowledge-centre/perspectives/?_sft_sector=transport

Check out our previous conversation with Mac Irvine, Jet Zero Australia here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2202964/episodes/16017375

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the SAF podcast. This week I'm delighted to be joined by Michelle Carter from Innovate UK Business, connect and Sustainable Aviation Fuel Innovation Program. Connect and Sustainable Aviation Fuel Innovation Programme and on this episode we're going to have quite a UK-centric discussion about where UK SAF production is at and where financing is coming from, and looking at all sorts of things to consumer understanding about sustainable aviation fuel. But before we get into all of that, michelle, thanks so much for joining us. How are you?

Speaker 2:

I'm very well. Thank you, oscar. How are you?

Speaker 1:

I am fantastic, thank you. So before we get into the nitty gritty, do you just want to introduce yourself and your background and how you ended up in your current role?

Speaker 2:

Yes, sure. So, as you rightly said, I'm Michelle Carter. I'm head of transport at Innovate UK Business Connect, uk business connect, um. So I have worked in the current role since uh 2016 and before that I was aviation manager within the organization and then, previously to that, in the same organization I organisation I worked as a manager for industrial biotechnology. So my route to where I am today has been very convoluted. So I'm actually a marine biologist by training, so I did all my degrees and I did some research for a little while until I joined the predecessor to Business Connect, which was Knowledge Transfer Network. So it's been quite a convoluted journey to where I am today and I became, as I said, head of transport in 2016. So we cover all the modes of transport within my team. So we cover all the modes of transport within my team and so, specifically for me, I began the SAF journey about 10 years ago just over 10 years ago now and that was a time when nobody in pushing for SAF at that time and I recognised there was an opportunity for us to collaborate and drive change for the industry.

Speaker 2:

So I worked quite closely with that organisation for a little while and I recognised an opportunity, even though it was fairly nascent in the UK to set up a special interest group on SAF, just so that we can start looking at what the building blocks are in the UK, so those chemical building blocks, if you like.

Speaker 2:

So I work with colleagues, chemistry experts and we assess that to sort of say right, if you see the different capabilities in the uk, whether it be in business or research, we can see them as pieces of jigsaw that we stick together and essentially start building that supply chain. So we did that for a couple of years, um, and I still work with the Sustainable Aviation Group since then. But then things started happening in the UK, so government started talking about a mandate and they set up the Jet Zero Council at the time under the Conservative government. And that's when I saw an opportunity to set up something similar again and we called it the SAF Innovation Programme, and that still runs today. And so I was the architect for the SAF Innovation Programme and I brought a team together internally with various expertise along that supply chain. We are actively now working with businesses to help build that supply chain.

Speaker 1:

So one of the things that you guys produce at Innovate UK Business Connect, you produce these great reports on different aspects of sort of SAF and sort of looking at areas that need sort need wider discussion and bringing things to attention, and a recent one that I saw revolved a lot around the investment landscape. So how does the UK compare to other countries when it comes to sort of amounts of investment in SAF and where and what stages the investment's going? So is there sort of a trend that you can sort of widely pick out?

Speaker 2:

So in our analysis and the analysis that we did does come with some boundaries and caveats, if you like, and we we worked on that analysis based on information that's in the public domain only, so it is indicative, so we have to bear that in mind. Indicative, so we have to bear that in mind, and the actual story might be something completely different, and it probably is, and there may be stuff out there that we don't know about. So I'm just going to flag that now. But the UK has, from the analysis, attracted around £180 million in investment, which is only just over 1% of the global funding investment, private investment that's happening globally and, interestingly, 29% of that is going to power-to-liquid projects. There is a government mandate, as we know, that's signalling future demand, but investment remains limited due to the uncertainty over long-term revenues and the high cost of new technologies. Obviously, uk government is working to address those and the funding that we're seeing the investment is largely concentrated in early stage activity from sort of incubator style, and also later stage venture capital investments is primarily what we're seeing.

Speaker 1:

And it's amazing that 29% of it's going into power to liquid fuels. That's a really stark figure and I'm guessing there must be an element of the sub-mandate, with the esaf sub-mandate coming in from 2030. There must be some eyes on on that and being able to align with that and, as well, sort of flipped into that, the the cap on heifer as well, that comes in at yes at 2030 as well yeah, there's.

Speaker 2:

The government has implemented, obviously, these um mandates and different targets, as you rightly say, and the half a cap being one of those. It's sort of stimulating people to look at other pathways as well. And the advantage, of course, as we know, with power to liquids it's it's a zero carbon, you know, at the end. So it makes it quite an attractive investment proposition from from a carbon emission point of view. There are still some technology challenges with power to liquids. As we know, it's highly risky as it's quite expensive. It's highly risky, it's quite expensive. So there's various things that need to be addressed in that way and UK government has indicated it was like 3.5% in 2040 of total jet fuel to come from the powder liquid process come from the powder liquid process.

Speaker 1:

It will be interesting to see whether the investment levels you know you see a translation from that 29% in sort of the early stage you're looking at venture capital whether you see that transferring down the line into project finance and whether there's a drop off, because you're likely to see a drop off because some technologies won't necessarily scale at the levels that others will and you'll see a thinning of the herd, but whether the percentage of projects that get financed, whether it's about a third. So that's something I think would need to be sort of kept an eye on going forward.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and I think that's what's the beauty with this investment analysis. What we're saying is this is a snapshot in time and what we're going to see I mean, this is not just the UK, it's globally differences in policies as they develop over time and the technology developments that happen over time. Where are we going to be in 10 years time?

Speaker 1:

I think this is another thing that you have been sort of involved with is the um you have been sort of involved with is the SAF Clearinghouse, which has, you know, been developed to help new technologies come through, because you're only going to get new project scaling and the continued sort of advancement and development if there's a new technology pathway that more innovative solutions can come through. So could you just quickly explain you know what the SAF clearinghouse does and its function more widely and how it sort of helps longer term look at diversifying SAF production pathways yeah.

Speaker 2:

So the the UK SAF clearinghouse is a program that's funded by our Department of Transport and it provides cross-industry support for the development, testing and qualification of SAF. And that's a key difference with the US Clearinghouse. So there is a clearinghouse in the US that was the original one and in the US the model is it provides funding for companies, so it sort of reduces the barrier to entry for new aviation fuels. In the US it's not based around sustainability. So, as we know, aviation fuel, the main criteria is safety and fit for purpose properties of that fuel. However, in the UK DFT were quite keen to ensure that we would set one up to support the global ambition to provide a global alliance for fuel testing, a global alliance for fuel testing. But in the UK we're going to focus only on supporting fuels that offer reduced carbon emissions.

Speaker 2:

So the clearinghouse itself plays a crucial role in supporting the continual development of innovative technologies in SAF. That's why it exists. So it helps the companies navigate the technical and regulatory landscape through the ASTM D4054 process because, as we know, aviation fuel is highly regulated. It's very strict technical specification and I think what we are finding is that there's because of the growing interest in SAF.

Speaker 2:

Is companies really don't. Some of them don't really understand the technical requirements of the fuel and this is where the clearinghouse plays a really crucial role and we will signpost companies to them, even if they're really early stage and not ready for testing. It gives them that education piece so that they can tweak their production and their fuel to enable it to be more fit for purpose and go through that testing process. So the UK Clearinghouse subsidises fuel testing also. So it provides a grant for companies because because there are four tiers within the testing process, you need increasing volumes of fuel in order to test that fuel and they can often be costly. So there is a grant available for UK companies to apply to if they're ready for testing and then they can, and that sort of reduces the barrier to entry for sustainable aviation fuel in the UK.

Speaker 1:

Another sort of trend I picked out from the report that you guys did not of trend that I picked out from the report that you guys did not you mentioned. It's all public information, so you know that's sort of a pinch of salt, and there could be other, a lot of other information out there. So, um, a lot of it seems to be coming from outside the UK, from foreign investors who are investing into the UK and into UK-based SAF projects. Is that a worry, I know? Is there more work that needs to be done in sort of encouraging domestic investors to look at domestic production? Or is it a case of look, money's coming from Europe, from the US, from all across the globe? It's not something that we really need to be worried about, particularly at this stage?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I mean, it's a. It's a good point. The domestic investment in UK SAF projects is definitely lagging, as you said, behind foreign capital and I think some of the projects that are in the UK sort of came with their own funding or investment. And the US is definitely a first mover in investing in SAF projects. You know, the UK maybe sort of the SAF industry could be considered fairly nascent and there is a lot of technology risk and aversion to investing in first-of-a-kind plants and we found that the uk investors accounting for just around eight percent of global SAF investment.

Speaker 2:

But I think, given the recent launch of the SAF mandate and the renewable certainty mechanism which will come into force next year, I think we'll see that change slightly. I think that's the overall objective of those policies is to generate investment. So I think it will be interesting over time to see how that number changes and see if we do see more domestic investment and more confidence in the UK market going forward. Quite frankly, I think whether we should be concerned or not, no, I think if the overall objective is let's get the SAF industry built up as quick as possible, because a the priority is to decarbonize aviation and we've got a rapid deadline to meet. So where that investment comes from does it really matter?

Speaker 1:

it just seems slightly strange that there's enough sort of policy in place to encourage foreign investment, but it's not at the point where it's unlocked domestic investment. There seems to be a slight sort of. It might just be me. There seems to be a slight disconnect between the two, where money's willing to come in the country but investors that are already here don't see it the same way and I don't know if that's a reflection on. You know where the money's coming from, where the foreign money is coming from, whether they're in sort of a work even worse or unstable policy situation, or whether you know it's a case of you don't actually understand. Investors aren't looking at and appreciating the policy that we've got in place and the revenue certainty mechanism that's coming in. So do you see what I'm getting at?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I do do um and um. I don't think I have a ready-made answer for that. I think that there is growing interest domestically to invest in projects, but we can't forget as well the airlines are investing domestically. That is happening and we are in the process of doing an update on the analysis because of the recent airline announcements. You know, iag is one of the largest investors in SAF so, and they've invested quite heavily and made some significant announcements recently, so I think that may change, um, so hence why I'm saying that that analysis was a snapshot in time and it was only, yeah, whilst recently published. We had to draw a line at some point to release it, but now we're at that point gosh, there's so much happening. I think we need to revisit our analysis and refresh it and get another version out there, and I think at that point we may see some differences.

Speaker 1:

Did you? Were you tempted at any point to, you know, push it a month, wait and see, and then, oh, have another discussion, maybe push it another. Or were you very steadfast in your we're picking this day and we're not moving?

Speaker 2:

oh for the, for the original one. Um, yeah, I think we wanted to aim. Um, no, we weren't rigid at all. What we wanted to do was just get ensure we've got a good set of data within there that tells a meaningful story. Um, and I think what we were finding was we were struggling to keep up with all the announced global announcements at one point and we thought, if we keep what you know holding off and holding off, we're never going to get this published. So let's just get it out there, collect what we know so far, and um, and then we'll just get, um, you know, an even more interesting story out in the future another thing that that's come from.

Speaker 1:

That is, we mentioned that a lot of early there's a predominantly early stage investment. We're looking at sort of late venture capital and growth and seed levels, sort of funding going into projects, and there's not so much project finance. I think is probably the worst kept secret in sustainable aviation fuel that there's a problem about getting to FID and final investment decisions. So is that just because that's the timescale of the facilities we've got in the UK? They're just at the early stage. They haven't got through to looking for projects, construction yet. Or there are projects that are held up looking to get through FID but can't quite find the investment to do that yet. Or do you think there's sort of a bit of both going on?

Speaker 2:

Probably now a bit of both. Yeah, I think the cost of constructing and getting a SAF facility operational are huge. A typical SAF project carries a capital cost ticket between 500 million and 1 billion. So, whilst there's good mechanisms in place to support early stage funding through grants and venture capital type investments, and also project financing mechanisms to support subsequent first you know, in kind in kind facilities, but the challenge is, I think a lot of investors want quick returns on their investment. But if you're investing in a SAF project, you need to be in it for the long haul.

Speaker 2:

Because it the challenge is, I think a lot of investors want quick returns on their investment. But if you're investing in a SAF project, you need to be in it for the long haul because it takes time to get that facility up and running, particularly to commercial scale operation, which can take 10 years, and then you need to wait a few more years to get any return on that or make some profit. Even so, it's a really challenging environment for investors and producers alike. And, um, I think, whilst we've seen a lot of early stage investments, I'm wondering if the policy landscape within the UK is going to see some changes in in that I think the UK government has done a really good job in um communicating the fact that they've got this long-term policy. It's here, you know, it's legal. We're committed to delivering this. Whether we're going to see any changes as a result of that.

Speaker 1:

And are there? What is the sort of missing piece? Because the idea of sort of the way I kind of started thinking about it is that risk is like butter on a piece of toast you want to evenly spread around the whole toast, not right in the middle in a clump. You need to spread the risk across the project. You can't have too much feedstock risk, too much offtake risk, too much policy risk or technology risk. You've got to manage all those things together. Do you think the policy that the government's put in place is doing all it can do to help spread and mitigate all those risks? Or is business or investors not ready to sort of make investments based on sort of the risk profiles that these projects hold yet?

Speaker 2:

it's a difficult sustainability as core that is going to sort of dictate, if you like, the feedstocks that are ultimately used.

Speaker 2:

But the risk around the feedstock side is that it's the availability domestic availability but even if it's available, it may be competing with other industries. So I think the risks from a feedstock perspective expand beyond just SAF production. It's much broader than that. So, whilst we do have risks at different stages of the development process, stages of of the development process, um, and I think having the right business model and ensuring that you've got a good, you know, a reliable source of feedstock, you're ticking one box, aren't you? And? And also thinking about the whole life cycle, emissions in the process, so right from the source right through to emissions, and thinking about how you can optimise the carbon life cycle of process. So doing all that due diligence, essentially in the first instance, is going to make it an attractive investment proposition, um, and and also it's more attractive to you from the airline's perspective than the end use perspective because you know, particularly for an international or well any airline actually that they um, you know they need to be able to source the stuff.

Speaker 2:

That's not going to penalise them in terms of carbon credits, et cetera. So I think there's risks all over the place and it is. I think, as you say, you've got to do that due diligence right along that supply chain and through your life cycle to ensure that you're minimising the risk at every step that I think is doing quite well on the SAF front is Spain.

Speaker 1:

So again, something I read is that they've got five operational facilities and they've only received 0.16 billion euro in investment, and those facilities are owned and operated by oil and gas companies and they are very much at the forefront of this in terms of european saff production. Is this just an indication of the the importance of engaging with the oil and gas sector, the potential that they can, you know, make the facilities operational for a fraction of the cost of building a whole new one from scratch and will really help scale up short-term demand, allowing more time for future technologies like the power to liquid, give them more room for investment because they're not being caught up in other in building up current refineries well then, yeah, I mean it's an interesting one and I'm not sure I essentially have a specific um answer to that um with the um, you know if in some nations the oil and gas industry is daytoned and have committed to producing SAF, but I think overall the oil and gas industry have an important role to play.

Speaker 2:

The oil and gas industry have an important role to play. It's not just about the blending that SAF component, the synthetic or the synthetic component with the jet fuel, but the supply chain is complex and the industry operates to produce fossil jet fuel, oil gas through industry. So they already have a lot of infrastructure in place, particularly for the co-processing route. I think the challenges with that route is, as I was at the aviation field conference and they were talking about co-processing, and a crewed unit will need to go offline for about seven weeks to process the new feedstock and you're looking at $1 million per day to conduct that process. So for them the economics don't really stack up because they're only making a few extra dollars on a co-pro. For them it's not worth. It was what they were saying. Uh, for them it's not worth, it was what they were saying. Um, but co-processing does have benefits because you've got this existing infrastructure, um. But I think what's interesting from um you know the grangemouth perspective in eos.

Speaker 2:

The project Willow at Grangemouth in Scotland is currently doing an assessment and has completed that assessment and published the report. But it's seen an opportunity to utilise the redundant capex following the move from Ineos to import jet fuel. So UK and Scottish government are investing into the site to transform it into a biorefinery, including SAF. So whilst and I think, if I remember rightly from the analysis, the yeah, the plants in Spain, spain, um, yeah, they've got PTL and co-processing. So you know they've got the co-processing and but also looking at at PTL. So for whatever reason, they found a way to make the co-processing an opportunity and I don't know what the difference that would would be, and maybe the right oil and gas colleagues might be able to talk to that in a bit more detail.

Speaker 1:

So we had Repsol on an earlier sort of edition of the podcast and they're sort of the ones they're doing a PCL plant in Bilbao.

Speaker 1:

They're very strong on sort of converting their refineries, sort of gradually scaling up the coprocessing and capacity of biofuel that they can output. So I just think it's sort of tolerance and the long-term perspective. I think you know lots of people are aware of sort of oil and gas companies have a lot of money, they make a lot of profits from their traditional oil outputs. So it's sort of tolerance of whether they can look long-term, see the potential in the market and sort of it's up to individual um producers to to weigh up those, their priorities, both short term and long term. I suppose, because you know spain is an example of that. You know they can do it, there is potential to do. It is whether they're willing to, as you say, shut a refinery down for seven weeks to convert it, which is a long period of time, don't get me wrong. But it's sort of a strategy question as opposed to any other question. I think is what it seems like.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a challenging one. When you go to these aviation field meetings, you know there's such diverse opinions around this and, from an oil and gas industry perspective, it doesn't make economic sense for them. So what is the motivation going to be in order to utilise this existing infrastructure? And I know BP have been very active at developing the CoPro and playing an active part in getting the blend from 5% to 30% through the DAF stand. So they have been very, very active and it is something that they are doing, so the opportunity is there.

Speaker 1:

One more question on the production side before I want to get to demand side and the customer perspective in all of this. Currently the UK imports the majority of the SAF it uses at airports. It's not domestically produced. When do you think if I had to pin you down to a rough date, a rough sort of year, do you? You're already shaking your head I know the video doesn't go out, but you're. I've seen I go halfway through. You're already shaking your head. But if I had to pin you down to a I mean a rough year, um, when you think domestic production it's fine, this isn't going public or anything, so you don't have to worry about it being in the public domain you didn't say I want to pin you down to an exact date.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, I think everyone will realize that these things are impossible to forecast. But if you had to pick a year, what is that impossible to say?

Speaker 2:

fuel to be sustainable from 2025. So we've got two percent 2025, 10 2030 um, which is 1.2 million tons of SAF um, but at the moment, a lot of the obviously the majority of the the SAF at the moment is being and whilst government has implemented the advanced fuels fund on the Monday and the renewable certainty mechanism to start with, even today, there's no standalone SAF facility and we are 2025 and we've got five years to get to 10%.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Um, um, when is this point going to be, when we're going to be producing all our domestic requirements? I, I don't think it's going to be possible do you think we need to?

Speaker 1:

I'm going to slightly rephrase do you think we need to or do you think it's okay that if we import because obviously we import a lot of things we don't need to be? There's a global market and it's a globalized economy. We don't need to produce everything we use. So do you think there's actually you don't need to produce it all? Obviously it'd be great to produce an amount of stuff, fuel stuff that goes into the mandate, but we don't actually need to look at producing the majority of it I don't.

Speaker 2:

I don't think we could get hung up over ensuring that we can produce 100% domestically and we will be importing and typically different technologies develop and develop it and the yeah, and I think that that's why you know government is still supportive of a portfolio approach to decarbonizing aviation. So saf is not the one solution. There's hydrogen and there's also electric um. So that's their um. You know what, what their focus is, and I think the landscape over time is just going to change as these new technologies come into development. So, whilst we can set targets for SAF and SAF is going to play a critical role in international travel so whilst you're scaling up the production of SAF, there's going to be a point where it's well, we will keep that for the long haul flights. But actually we've got, we've done really well at developing all these technologies domestically and for domestic flights. That it just makes it a bit challenging to see what that SAF landscape is going to look like over time, if that makes sense no, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

I think it was probably unfair to pin you down to a year and I think you're absolutely right to point out we don't know what the landscape's going to look like in five years, ten years and, um, if anyone's able to predict that, they'd probably become a very wealthy person if they actually get that right. So fair play if they do so. Moving on a move to the customer side of the argument, because another good bit of analysis you guys have done, that I think is quite interesting, and I think people often speak about the customers in terms of corporate customers and the role they have in you know, book and claim, showing demand signals. But what about sort of you know, your everyday customer person flying on an airline going on holiday to Europe, sort of for their summer holiday? Do you think they, you know, know about SAF, know that exists, know that it's here today, know about you know different feedstocks, you know, is it something that is in their sort of psyche as sort of airline travelers?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I know it's interesting. So you're picking, picking up on our uh report that we did. It was a public perception study that we did, uh published last year, um, where, um, and there's a few of these these out there but we we um sort of canvassed the opinion of 2000 uk adults, um, and over 70 percent of them had no knowledge of SAF at all. So how we did it was to assess their understanding and then we told them what it was. And then it's like okay, we've given you this information, what do you think SAF is made of? So we kind of did it in that approach.

Speaker 2:

But when presented with the term, 61% identified SAF as a sustainable liquid alternative to fossil jet fuel. But the feedstock side, the public knowledge, wasn't so well informed and only 36% recognised used cooking oil as a potential source of SAF. Percent recognized used cooking oil as a potential source of SAF, 33 percent identified waste gases from industry and 22 percent agricultural waste. Now I thought personally thought the wasting gases was really interesting, because that's so uh, it's not an obvious feedstock for the general public to think, oh yeah, you can make, make stuff with that. So I drilled into a bit more on the data, the raw data to see, well, where are these people from.

Speaker 2:

That I think industrial waste gases is is a good good idea, and they were mainly in wales really. Yeah, so lanzatech were doing loads of um promotion around their production and the facilities you know with the tata steel plant, um, and and so it just goes to show, if you communicate in the right narrative, people get it and they understand it. Um so. But the other thing that was interesting was 28 thought hydrogen was saf and 17 electric propulsion. So I there's definitely some gaps in understanding um, but um, yeah, I think fair enough, though it took me a couple of years to work out what's going on in SAF.

Speaker 1:

So I think we can forgive them there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and when we told them that you know UK government is focused on waste sources and it's very much not about taking food and crops to create fuel. It's all about the waste side. It's primarily the focused. You know over half of them indicated they would be willing to take a flight powered by the fuel. So I think there is actually growing. There's growing. We know that there is a growing demand for aviation and to fly more sustainably and people are becoming more aware of that and want to fly green. But I still think as an industry more widely, we do have a bit of work to do to inform them a bit of work to do to inform them.

Speaker 1:

And whose job is that? You mentioned Lanzatec doing a lot of work in Wales, which just proves its work. It's quite funny that there was sort of the group that you picked out as being understanding. You could trace it all the way back to, you know, to what Lanzatec was doing from that data, that data. But is it, you know, producers that are looking to produce it? Is it the airlines? Is it the airports? Is it the the fuelers? Because at the end of the day, they're the ones that are set with fines. If, like the fueling companies, they're the ones with the burden um for mandates and fines, so who is on all of them? Who's sort of really got to drive the, the understanding from people that are flying?

Speaker 2:

um, I think everybody in that rally chain has a role role to play, um, but it's often, as we know, the airlines who sit at the front line of um customer interaction and they're the ones selling the experience, the journey and, increasingly, the sustainability credentials that come with it. And there are various loyalty schemes as well for their customers. So there's green fares, offset options as well you can when you book your flight, and they all kind of flow through to the airline's user interface. But we can also see the airports are playing a key role as well in promoting SAF by supporting its adoption and making it more economically viable for airlines, and Heathrow is one example. Their SAF incentive program is a strong example designed to accelerate SAF, I'll take, and it sort of helps bridge the cost gap between SAF and conventional jet fuel through a rebate system funded by the aeronautical charges. And Heathrow aims to increase its staff usage to 11% by 2030.

Speaker 2:

So there you've got examples of an airline and an airport all doing their bit to improve the environmental impact of flying. And you know you will often see as well, I think you know often the airlines play a key role as well in terms of the livery on fuel trucks as well. I contain SAF, you know. So, whilst it's communicating to the customer that there is a greener alternative that you are flying on, I think it still comes back to that survey whereby great, but what is it? And I think still there's a piece of work to raise awareness on what SAF actually is. But then the question is do customers actually care or do they just want to know? I'm flying alternative, I don't care what it is, it's made from, I don't know. That's an interesting one.

Speaker 1:

And if you know, understanding from customers was to, you know, improve. You know they'd seen delivery on airport vehicles sort of promoting SAF. They became more aware of what SAF is, that it's available now and what the different sort of processes and feedstocks were. There's more people outside of Wales that know you can make it from waste gases. What difference would that make if we're looking at sort of production levels, usage, do you think it will make much of a difference or is it just sort of something about developing growing public perceptence?

Speaker 2:

So, as I say, the general public do want to be able to fly and minimise the environmental impact as they do so, impact as they do so, and I think more informed customers are going to support green fare options. They'll choose airlines potentially based on the sustainability credentials or contribute to those SAF funding schemes, and all of these create strong market signals. So the demand side pressure can influence, I think, airline strategies. They encourage policymakers as well to introduce supportive regulations or subsidies and ultimately accelerate the scaling and cost reduction of SAF production, ultimately accelerate the scaling and cost reduction of SAF production and I think, as understanding grows, so does societal political support for aviation, making customer awareness a key enabler in that transition to sustainable flight. So I think that it's definitely got a key role to play in ensuring that it's not just a handful of airlines making that change, but actually it's a widespread change that's being made due um the customers wanting that and I.

Speaker 1:

I will also say that I'll put all the reports that we referred to in this discussion in in the description, because I think you get a good snapshot here, but I think it's well worth a read, um, and they give you some very interesting snapshots into what's going on both in the UK and abroad, so they are definitely worth checking out. Michelle, thank you so much. We covered a lot of ground there. Thank you for your time and sharing the intel that you've gathered from all these different analyses.

Speaker 2:

Um, you've done it's really interesting stuff, so thank you no, thank you very much, uh, for your time and nice to meet you.