The SAF Podcast

The SAF World Cup

• SAF Investor • Season 4 • Episode 20

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Getting fully behind World Cup fever, SAF Investor is running The SAF World Cup.

Gathering experts from different countries, we will be running a knock out style bracket to find the most promising SAF country in the world. Decided by popular vote!

Whether it is policies, access to capital, offtakers, feedstock access, infrastructure expertise all these will be key discussion points. 

Join for a bit of World Cup fun alongside some serious discussion!


Speakers include:

Trevor Best, Syzygy Plasmonics - Brazil

Philippe Haffner, Haffner Energy - France

Jim Stonecipher, EdyMac - United States of America 

Andrew Symes, OXCCU - England

Izabela Santos, StratX Group - Sweden


Listen to the full webinar on our podcast for some light but informative SAF competition.

Welcome And Rules Of Play

SPEAKER_00

Hello everyone and welcome to the first ever SAF Investor Town Hall webinar. It's great to see so many people here and watching. And as you may have guessed, we have bought into World Cup fever slightly, and we are going to be running the most important World Cup event happening this week. Forget the Football World Cup, forget the T20 Cricket World Cup in England. It's all about the SAF World Cup for the next hour. And we've got some great countries lined up to participate. Representatives from the US, Brazil, Sweden, France, England are going to be up against it, debating each other to find out which is the most promising SAF country. The way this is going to work is we will do head-to-head discussions where we'll give each speaker around three and a half, five minutes to state their case for their country, and then we will open it up to some audience comments. If you want to get involved, do put stuff in the comments. I'll make sure to read it out. And we'll also decide the winner of each matchup by an audience poll. So without further ado, we will get straight on with the first matchup. We will not be running any hydration breaks during these games as well. They will be going straight through, no time for anything like that. And for our first matchup, we've got a pretty heavyweight clash in the South World. We're going to have the US against France. So Jim Stonecipher from EddyMac is going to be our US representative. And we've also got Philippe Hafner from Hafner Energy waving the French flag as Marcella is in the comments. So, gents, I'm going to leave it over to you, Jim, as the host nation of the Football World Cup. I'll give you the first go and then Philippe, you can follow. So, Jim, if you want to lay out your case in three and a half, maybe five minutes at a push as to

USA Pitch: Energy And Feedstocks

SPEAKER_00

why the US is the most promising SAF country. Over to you.

SPEAKER_02

Very good. Thank you, Oscar. Well, let me first of all start off with you know, in America, we're lucky that we we understand anything about soccer, much less World Cup. What we do understand, though, is we understand agriculture, we understand energy. And that's what gives the U.S. a huge advantage is the fact that we have abundant energy supplies that we can then tap into to be able to create blue hydrogen and then be able to use an advantaged market in the U.S. for sequestration or enhanced oil recovery to be able to get credits for the products that we're making as part of the revenue stream and the and the revenue stack itself. Focusing in on the agricultural side of things, that gives us great feedstocks, whether it's it's agricultural materials that generate oils that can go into hefe processes, whether that's agricultural materials that can be used as feedstocks for either uh creating an ethanol pathway, whether it's uh creating more of a cellulosic base that then can go into multiple different pathways, whether it's it's into uh feedstocks for uh uh ethanol to jet or uh directly into ethanol itself, or cellulosics that can even have pathways that get into the HEFA market uh as precursors. So the US is highly advantaged in that, and we're not we're not held back by uh having certain restrictions on what pathways we can choose, what what can or can't be put into the marketplace, and we have a huge market uh of availability and are more than willing to export everything that we make over to countries in Europe, in the UK, and Asia itself. So that's what makes America great.

SPEAKER_00

Awesome. So there you go, you've got the US point of view, and you've also got things like you've got a lot of capital available in the US in that part of the world. You've got other things like that going in your favor.

SPEAKER_02

We do, but the capitalists don't care where, they will spend the money wherever they can make the best returns.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's a very good point. And now, Philippe, we'll we'll jump over to you on the front side. So, why is France such

France Pitch: EU Mandate And Biomass

SPEAKER_00

a promising thing for sustainability fuel?

SPEAKER_01

So thank you very much, Oscar and Jim. So on my side, I believe France uh is the most uh attractive, uh most uh promising system, uh territory in the world for large-scale development of staff projects, and for five reasons. The first reason is the most powerful and binding staff market in the world, which is EU. And EU has established the world's most ambitious and legally binding staff mandate. So airlines operating in Europe will be required to incorporate 20% staff by 2035, and of course more by 2040 and by and to come to net zero by 2050, and with significant penalties for non-compliance. Unlike other regions, uh Europe does not allow book and play mechanisms to meet these obligations. So we have to physically blend and supply the staff within European airports. So this creates a structural and long-term demand for locally produced staff. And second, France has one of the largest sustainable biomass resources in the world in the sense that it's the largest country in EU and the leading agricultural producer, and we produce 20% of the total EU agricultural resources. Most industry experts agree that biostaff, which relies on biomass, will represent the majority of the global staff production by 2040. If we speak of forest biomass, they are coming increasingly facing both threshold opposition and regulatory constraints under RED three. So as a result, the agricultural residues are emerging as the most sustainable and scalable feedstock for star production. So if I give you some figures, we produce in France 300 million tons of agricultural biomass, out of which we have approximately 40 million tons of residues which have no conflict in use and which could be sustainable which could be mobilized every year. And this would represent approximately 7 million tons of staff per year, which represents 80% of the staff volume expected by 2040. So this is extremely high figures. The third reason is the required technology already exists. We developed technologies to convert agricultural residues into staff compliance in gas and through the different uh the main pathways, fissure chops, alcohol to jet, or even methanol to jet. So we have not only the feedstock but also the technology needed to convert into sustainable biomass, into sustainable uh sorry, uh staff. The fourth reason is that France benefits from one of the cleanest electricity systems in the world. And we have uh 80% of our electricity which is nuclear, which is stable, and which is not expensive. The carbon intensity of French electricity is only 22 grams per CO per kilowatt hour. And this is important because in order to make stuff, including biosuff, we need a lot of electricity. If we look at the European average, the European average is approximately 242 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour, which means that France has 10 times less CO2 per kilowatt hour of electricity than the average in the EU. And the fifth reason is that we already have a complete industrial ecosystem. We have uh leading engineering capabilities, we have extensive refining and energy infrastructure, and highly skilled industrial talents. So, for these reasons, uh I but personally believe that France uh is extremely promising, if not the most promising country in the world to develop sub-projects. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00

Philippe, you came very well prepared. All sorts of facts and figures there, all sorts of detail. That was that was excellent. So everyone, I've put a poll that should be live that people will be able to see. And if you can't see it, just get in the comments and pick which one, which argument you're most convinced by. I should point out also if if the audience doesn't get involved, I'm going to choose, and no one wants that. So we need more as many people voting as possible because we can't have power going into my hands. That's far too dangerous. So, yeah, we've got some people in the poll. We're gonna give it a few minutes. Oh, it's very close. I'll give you that. It's very, very close currently. We need some more people going. Oh, this is very tight. Right, I'm gonna give it ten more seconds for people to find the poll. We've got 10 more, five more. Right, I'm gonna call it that. I think the winner by a hair, we're gonna give it to Philippe and France. Which makes sense. If we're talking football, France has got a much better football heritage than the US. I'm sorry to say, Jim. Absolutely. But Jim, you've got another shot. You're gonna you could come back as the best runner up in the for the next round. So

France Wins Then New Matchup

SPEAKER_00

you're not totally out of it yet. But you might just have to go and define some more facts and figures, because apparently that's what that's what sways people. So Philippe, we'll see you in the next round, Jim. Maybe we'll have to see what happens in the next fixture. So I'm gonna bring up now our next two teams, representatives to the next two teams, and we've got quite an interesting matchup. We've got Isabella Santos, who's representing Sweden, and we've got Trevor Best. Hi, Trevor, who is going to be representing Brazil. So I'm not sure if you could get two countries that are so far apart. Um, we've tried to get a good variety, so this should be a really interesting one. So, Isabella, I'm gonna give you home field advantage, so I'll let you go first and lay out a piece. I don't actually know if it is an advantage, or let you choose. Do you want to go first or second?

SPEAKER_03

Um Trevor, go ahead. Surprise me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, tactical. The tactics are getting real now, it's getting competitive. Yeah, I like it.

SPEAKER_05

Defense wins championships, right?

SPEAKER_00

This is true. So, Trevor, I'll hand it over to you. Three and a half minutes, five minutes max, lay out why Brazil is the most promising staff

Brazil Vs Sweden: Cost And Mandates

SPEAKER_00

country. Hopefully, we all get the format now, and then Isabella, you can respond.

SPEAKER_06

Amazing. So uh, you know, I'm I'm actually going to uh start off with uh you know, viva o Brazil, because uh I feel very, very good about uh representing this country where my company, SysyG, is uh starting a lot of work. And I'm actually going to echo some of the things uh Felipe said about uh the importance of feedstock and the prices of your feedstock. Because everybody knows in the SAF world, you know, feedstock is everything. Uh if you're paying for used cooking oil, that represents most of your costs for Hefa. If you are uh you know doing power to liquids, your price of power represents most of your costs in the end eSAf. And uh for Sisygi's process using uh you know biomass and renewable electricity, uh it is the same. And this is why we've identified Brazil as the best market for SAF. The reason is uh on the biomass side, the sheer abundance of maybe and uh Felipe, if you could uh mute. Uh thank you. And so uh the sheer abundance of uh feedstock on the uh biomass side. Uh if you look at the IEA's uh global biomethane report, you will see that Brazil has more biomass reserves than any other country on earth. We are finding this uh as we are looking at you know sugarcane plantations and uh the biomass that comes off the average sugarcane processing plant can create 50 to 100,000 tons of saf per year. Barely looking, we have found dozens of these sites more than enough to make millions of tons of saf per year. And because there is no alternative for that biogas, they don't have a good uh you know subsidy structure to support biomethane. Natural gas is very cheap, so they they don't have a good offtake for that biomethane. We can get it for very low cost, uh, much lower cost than any other country. Uh my biomethane costs in Brazil are about one-third the biomethane costs that you see in the US or Europe, giving us a structural advantage that can't be matched by other countries. That's a lot on biomethane. Now let's talk about power. The Brazilian power grid is already more than 80% renewable, uh, closing on above 90% in certain areas like uh you know Bahia or Pernambuco. Uh, and that is all driven by hydroelectricity. We all know about the Amazon River, one of dozens of rivers in Brazil that power their electric grid, providing 24-7 low-cost renewable power. Uh, whenever I look at power in the US or you know in Europe, I'm looking at uh costs of $120 a megawatt or more. And in Brazil, we are getting quotes for 24-7 electricity at $40 a megawatt and under the right conditions, even less. This is another structural advantage that just can't be overcome. And altogether, this gives us the capability of producing SAF at a cost point that is lower than any other country on earth. And uh ultimately, this is why I think Brazil is gonna win. And I'm just at three minutes and 20 seconds. So with that, you know, I'll I'll take my shot on goal and pass it off to Isabella.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you so very much, Trevor. Uh, really, really interesting. And since it's a uh it's a match, um, I will first respond to some of the um claims that you are making. On the feedstock side, uh Sweden, because that's the country I'm representing, um, has actually abundance of um of feedstocks. Uh the forestry um industry is the biggest in Europe. Um, you also have mentioned the 80% renewable power. Um in Sweden, it's over 90 of renewable power. And more importantly, Sweden is the only country that combines an operating advanced um biorefinery today, has the infrastructure, um, clear mandates uh that Brazil is very much lacking, um, and um a next generation forest uh residue plant uh with government uh backing or EU backing if you like. Um you know we we you were referring to some of the uh statistics. Uh Sweden also has 13,000 ton uh ESAF project in engineering. So it's not only on the paper, but it's soon going to be uh going to FID, let's all hope, and all powered by the cheapest renewable electricity in Europe, uh protected legally by binding mandates, um, which you know very much support. It's also uh closest to where the mandates are, meaning that you don't really need to spend any of your uh carbon intensity to be providing it to the local airports.

SPEAKER_00

Awesome. So that's match two. We've got gone, there was some heavy shots thrown. It was a pretty high scoring game, I reckon. I'd say that was uh multiple goals on each side. So everyone should know the drill now. Get in the car, get on the poll, see who likes it devote.

SPEAKER_05

No, no, je l'ai normal.

SPEAKER_00

Isabella definitely went on the offensive, so um, so that was good to good to see. We've got very attacking. I don't know if we can call it football. We need to come up with a name for this if it's gonna if it's gonna be a thing that we do again. So we might have to come up with a name for it. Um but we'll give everyone 10 seconds more. Get in the get in the comments, get in the poll. We've got at least one vote for Brazil, so you haven't been niled, Trevor, so that's a good sign.

SPEAKER_03

Um I don't see it.

SPEAKER_00

Things are going, we've got it. Uh Isabel, I'm assuming you'd vote for Sweden, so we'll just pretend.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I I have it, but if I'm allowed to, I will definitely vote. I haven't been voting. Um Trevor, I hope you haven't been voting.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, I voted, you should vote. Like, I got the ability. Why would I why would I uh not do that?

SPEAKER_00

You've got to buy your corner, right? It's I mean it's moving around a lot. I think there are some people just alternating votes just to um just to make things more difficult, they're just cut changing their votes every second, but we're gonna call it there, and um it seems that Brazil has won that one. So, Trevor, you're the Brazil, you are the victor. And I'm now just going to tally the votes and see how many votes compare the Sweden-US votes, see how who goes up against Andrew, who's representing England, who's been waiting patiently. And unfortunately, Isabella, you've just fallen short of Jim. I've no idea how Jim managed to get through there, to be honest, but somehow he has. Um so Isabella, it was a very valiant fight, and thank you so much for um for coming on and defending Sweden and um taking part. That was um that was awesome.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00

And Trevor, we'll see you back in the next round. So we'll see you in a minute, and now I'm going to welcome back Jim for our next game. Jim, you made it, you've made it through to the best losers round, and you're going up against Andrew. Andrew Simes, Ox CCU. Welcome.

SPEAKER_04

Hello, hi. Can you hear me okay?

SPEAKER_00

We've got you loud and clear.

SPEAKER_04

So somehow I've made it through to the next round without having played a game. So that's good.

SPEAKER_00

Somehow, I promise you this isn't rigged just because I'm English. English, England managed to get a bye. Um, it was purely random, but somehow you have managed to do that. So you're in the next round. Well, we shall see. So now, Jim, I know you've laid out the case for the US already. I don't know if you've thought of anything else. So I'm gonna go to Andrew first to let him lay out the case for England and then maybe um give you a chance to respond um after what Andrew

England Enters With A Policy Case

SPEAKER_00

said, seeing as everyone has already heard from you. So, Andrew, uh, take it away. Why is why is England a promising place to go and good luck?

SPEAKER_04

Okay, uh, well, at first thought, you might be thinking of a small, densely populated country with high electricity prices, high labour costs, and high land prices. That's not a good combination for SAF. But you might be wrong. What we do have in the UK is a very supportive government. We've got some great industrial clusters, we've got some world-leading universities, great SAF companies, a venture capital market that's leading in Europe, and most importantly, we have a SAF mandate, a UK SAF mandate that's specific to the UK. And it has a PTL mandate in it as well. It has some interesting features as well that actually make it more attractive, in my opinion, far more attractive in other people's opinions than the EU one. That is, the first is that we have a heffer cap. This means that the UK is incentivising second generation waste based technologies. The other mandate has a real risk that you do just carry on doing more and more heifer, and other countries like Brazil, like Indonesia, will start taking more virgin palm oil and there's more used cooking oil from Europe. Yes, fine. But it Europe's doing nothing then to help the waste-based South Africa. And that is really, really important. It's a feature of the UK that the EU does not have. The second is for power to liquids, the UK has uh is is agnostic to the CO2 source. So that means you don't have to have biogenic CO2. It enables other CO2 sources. That is a more pragmatic approach and essentially opens up other sites. The final thing it has is that you have certificates that are based on the carbon intensity of the fuel. So essentially we get more certificates if you make a fuel with a better CI. There's not just a level you have to be below. And that's a really nice feature because it rewards people who are doing more for the climate. The most important thing the UK has though, that nowhere else has is the revenue certainty mechanism. So essentially, this will enable not just imported stuff but stuff produced on UK or English soil. And this is really, really important because essentially it can guarantee the offtake pricing and ultimately lead to bankability. In terms of fee stock, there's biogas, there's wood waste, there's a wind sector. So therefore, we do think there is a real opportunity in England as well. And the final thing to say is that whilst many people may think that actually the first refinery in the world was in the US, it may actually have been in England turning coal into the first ever liquid fuels. So some people might say it could be coming home.

SPEAKER_00

Andrew, that was a phenomenal performance. It was beautiful stuff to watch. It was much better than watching England play Ghana the other night. It was that was that was music to my ears, and I'm in no way biased. I'm staying entirely neutral. Jim, um I suppose now you've um you I'll give you a chance to respond and say why the US is potentially better than England. Um I'm gonna warn you, I put the poll up and you're already losing, so that's a great sign for it coming home. So you've got your work cut out for you. So have you got anything you'd like to use as a rebuttal against Andrew's very eloquent um explanation there of England?

SPEAKER_02

Well, let's let's maybe talk about the US position around power, where not only do we have abundant renewable power, whether it's hydroelectric, whether it's wind, whether it's solar, as a good source of feedstock, especially for a process like what you know we're talking about here for ESAF. Now, um those those are great sources, very abundant in the U.S. So we have a strength relative to that, and they're low cost. So they're not high cost like in some other regions, so it's very low cost for uh for those type of uh uh uh power requirements. So then you couple that up with the fact that, again, let's talk about you know the UK's provision that CO2 can come from anywhere. Well, in the United States, again, we've got huge resources around natural gas, the ability to make strong uh natural gas that goes into hydrogen that is essential to a lot of these ESAP projects, and the ability to not just sequester it, which is the right thing to do, but to sequester it and be able to get that as part of your overall revenue stack is huge. Where you know many of the countries want the sequestration, but they don't want to reward it. So the US is rewarding that. And then finally, overall, you know, the US market it's it's a demand side market. It's it's really focused on people adopting this, which then creates a lower uh price point for the SAF itself, as opposed to the mandated markets, which are creating higher price points, making it more difficult for off-take agreements, because it's just it's challenging for um the the um airlines to actually support such a high price and not be able to just trickle it down into their overall um uh cost and then ultimately go back to the customers themselves. So um that demand side and the fact that we're doing it as a carrot as opposed to a stick.

SPEAKER_00

That's awesome, Jim. Right. The poll's been going in the background throughout this match, and it is it is close. All these matches have been quite close. We haven't had a blowout yet, which is um which is interesting. And um I should point out that the winner of this match will play France because Brazil is going to get a bye straight to the final because it got the most votes from the audience polls. This is the the problems with having uneven numbers of teams when you're doing a knockout tournament. So Brazil's getting a bye. So, Trevor, you're already in the final, and whoever wins this vote will go up against Philippe in the semi-final. So get in the comments, get in the chat. If anyone wants to contribute anything as well that's watching, please feel free. Um, anything that any of the speakers have missed you'd like to point out. Brian's cheering for the USA. That's good to see. And right, we'll give it five more seconds. And on that, it was close, but Jim, unfortunately, um your journey at the World Cup ends here, and you are um you're gonna have to uh make your way home. It was um it was a close it was a close battle, and you fought your cause valiantly considering the headwinds in the US. Um maybe we'll have to do this at another World Cup when things are slightly more favorable in the US. And you've got thank you.

SPEAKER_02

Now I can vote for the next round of winners.

SPEAKER_00

Now you can vote. Who's your pick? Before you go, let's get you to get your pick. Who's your um pick to win? You've got France, Brazil, and England left.

SPEAKER_02

I'm I'm I'm super strong on Brazil. I think they're in a great position. Uh Trevor's made some great arguments for why they are a leader. Um, and then then yeah, I still root for the UK, though. I still root for the UK.

SPEAKER_00

That's good enough. We'll take that. We'll take the UK, as I said, totally impartial, totally impartial, not biased

England Vs France: Mandates Clash

SPEAKER_00

at all. And so, Jim, we'll we'll bid farewell to you, and um I'll bring back um Philippe from France for this. This feels like a good matchup. There's a lot of history in this matchup, England, France. We won't get into it all, but um we will um everyone knows about the history between these two countries. So you've both laid out your piece. So I think what we'll do is we'll slightly change it and make you both go on the offensive. So rather than say why England's good, say why France is less good or why England's less good. Let's let's take the offset, let's go slightly more offensive with it to prove why yours is slightly better than France's in the interest of getting into the final. So, um, Philippe, let's start with you and um why France is better positioned than England specifically to be strong. And I'm expecting a very strong policy discussion here. Some very strong policy points um because there are some interesting differences. So, Philippe, um over over to you and kick us off.

SPEAKER_01

So, away, France, it's not a question only of France, it's a question of EU. Uh uh Andrew, you were right when when you speak that mandate is European in the World Cup, Philippe. Sorry, World Cup, Europe in the World Cup. But uh I mean, so well the the question is the first thing is that we have to go to FID in order to succeed. And in order to get to FID, we need we need to have off-take contracts. And uh the main reason why mandates are so important is precisely uh to give a security for the producers to sell their staff because the airlines will now have no choice, and EU by itself is a huge market, 350 million people uh consuming approximately 40 million uh tons of kerosene per year. So if we have to look at what would represent in 20, 35, 20 percent of that total amount, that's approximately 9 million tons. Which means that with the mandate that we have in Europe, it creates a very, very important security not only for one country but for a full subcontinent, uh which is most probably the still the biggest economic uh uh I would say if we put all the EU countries together. And this means that uh this brings a lot of security for uh airlines uh in order to uh consume the stuff. And so this is the first key. The second thing is that again, France has got a very interesting ecosystem because it's a it's an agricultural country with a lot of residues, because the mandate or directly uh directed doesn't like uh to use the forestry uh residues. Uh, we rely a lot on the agricultural residues. And then, of course, I will say again and again it is important also to have all the industrial engineering capacity to do that. Uh we don't have to forget that France has the headquarters of Airbus, which which is uh the the I would say one of the two main uh uh uh uh aircraft manufacturers, but also we have a lot of industries around the aerospace and big uh refineries and engineering capacities in order to uh succeed uh in making those big stuff projects. So we have all the ingredients, uh a stable, of course, uh uh a stable system, which is extremely important because we are speaking of projects which have to last over 20 years, and so we have to have a political stability, we need to have uh the uh all the legal and binding environment, and with a stable currency. And all these compounds make that we have much more chance to make the uh a lot of SAF projects successful within the French territory. So that that's it is there you go.

SPEAKER_00

That again, great performance for Lee. That was a very strong half of um SAF football um working title. Um come on, Andrew. What's your um what's your rebuttal?

SPEAKER_04

Right, okay. Uh well, I mean this is a a pretty kind of equal fight, um, but France has got even higher labour costs than the UK, even higher land costs than the UK. Um and there is complexity around the EU and the sub-band aid and the penalties, and the UK for all of its also got a lot of political uncertainty, certainly at the moment. Um there is still, I believe, a cross-party consensus around the SAF legislation in the UK. Um and in some ways there are elements, as I pointed to earlier, that make it more attractive, the heavy cap, the looking at uh the carbon intensity of the fuel being two of them. But you know, in in in France you do have this big uncertainty uh around the nuclear energy, whether or not that's seen as additional, for example, um, whether or not that's uh suitable for power to liquids or not. Um France is also more self-sufficient than the than the UK in terms of jet fuel. I I think it's it's broadly um can can self-supply in terms of its its refineries, obviously that oil is imported. But the UK is massively short. Uh around 30% is imported as jet. Um so in some ways in the UK SAF is an even more of an imperative and it's a larger market. Um so that's probably it really. Uh and and yes, France may have Airbus, but um, don't forget that England invented the jet engine on which it depends. So we must always remember that. And uh yeah, it would be not able to fly if it didn't have uh a jet turbine engine.

SPEAKER_00

Uh which is that's so English, so English, living in our past past inventions.

SPEAKER_04

Well, yeah, maybe a little bit of that going on.

SPEAKER_00

A bit like the football team, maybe. Yeah, maybe slightly like the football team. The vote the vote is ongoing, so if Philippe swayed you for France or Andrew has managed to somehow convince you England is a really promising sap hotspot, get in there and vote. Currently it's level, so it's close. What whilst people are voting, and what is your have you guys if you play Brazil in the final, we're gonna do sort of a pre-match press conference, what would be your um where would you go for Brazil in sort of a sentence? Where is Brazil weakest in in SAF currently? And Trevor, just stop listening for a second so you don't get any hints.

SPEAKER_04

Anyone go I think I think Brazil's a very intimidating opponent, but you've just got to pick on the fact that the rainforest needs to carry on existing. You've just got to keep going down on that double down.

SPEAKER_00

Very good. Destroying the rainforest, Trevor. Destroying the rainforest. I'm sure Trevor's not destroying the rainforest. No, no, you asked me to. Yeah, no, it's very fair, it's fair enough. Um, Philippe, anything other than the rainforest you think there might be a weakness in the world?

SPEAKER_01

I think it's the first the first flame flank ever was Clement death.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, so very good, very good. So now the votes have happened, and I'm going to get massively accused of um of of um any form of um bias here. I'm gonna get is people are gonna come for me because England have won. We've made the the World Cup final. Somehow, Andrew, you've done it, you've got through to the World Cup final. I'm I'm very sorry, Philippe. It must I've got a it must be the audience makeup. We need some more French from the audience, it must be. That's what we'll put it down to. So next time we'll we'll try and get more of a balanced audience. Um, but Philippe, it was great to have you on, and it was a very, very good performance, I have to say. Very impressive. So thank you very much for for coming on and and defending France in the World Cup.

Final: Brazil Vs England Standards

SPEAKER_00

And now we're going to the World Cup final. Normally there'll be sort of some more pomp and circumstance about this, but we'll um we'll just keep this train rolling and get Trevor back. Trevor, you've had the easiest run to a final in a World Cup in history in one game. So now you've got to see if you can back it up. And Andrew's come the tough side of the draw. So, but we got two worthy finalists, I think. And so everyone's familiar with the format. Uh, Trevor, I'll let you go first. And you can go on the defensive if you want and defend Brazil, or you can go on the offensive and start criticizing England however you see fit. Why should Brazil win the SAF World Cup?

SPEAKER_06

Amazing. So uh so I'll get started. Uh and uh, you know, I'm I'm gonna go, it's gonna seem like I'm supporting the UK for a second, and then I'm gonna flip it around and I'm gonna start talking uh first about the revenue certainty mechanism, which is which is a great mechanism to help support the profitability of uh saph plants in the UK. You know, this is one of the reasons why I'm grateful representing Brazil because I don't need anything like that to be profitable. So uh I can uh I can uh make my fuel and send it across the ocean and not only maintain a good CI score, but maintain great profitability at the plant level. And uh, you know, should uh my my export market in the UK uh you know not be as attractive, I can just send it to the EU instead. Or, you know, and this might be something new to many of you on the call, or I can just you know do it domestically. If you haven't looked up the Brazilian SAF mandates, you should, uh, which is one of the reasons why I feel very confident about Brazil as a market, because even if uh for some reason the EU and the UK decide that they don't want my very low-cost, low CI SAF, there are some uh structural and regulatory things coming online in Brazil to support that SAF market domestically. So uh so that is uh a huge selling point. You know, I could go reiterate the the other structural uh advantages on like feedstock costs and power costs uh and and uh CI score, but uh I think that I am actually going to uh you know go into something that you mentioned on the rainforest. And uh this is something that's very near and dear to everyone in Brazil. It is part of the national and cultural identity of the country. And unfortunately, over the past couple of years, uh there have been uh you know, or over the past century, there's been a lot of damage to the rainforest. And when you look across Brazil, uh you start seeing what are called degraded lands, you know, lands where the forest was logged and turned into pasture or something like that, and now it is uh you know in a state that it is no longer producing anything and it's it's really beat up. Uh Brazil has uh actually implemented laws to reinvigorate these degraded lands through things like sugarcane production and energy crop production like elephant grass. And so producing SAF in Brazil isn't only providing a lower cost, lower CI molecule for Europe. It's also helping recover land that had been destroyed in Brazil previously, you know, potentially and ultimately helping to uh you know regrow uh the uh you know the vegetation there. Uh in this, you know, there are more structural benefits for me where I can get reduced taxes and things like this for helping recover degraded lands, and uh, and there are a lot of them. So, you know, kind of in conclusion, uh not only are we taking waste streams like sugarcane residue, which would otherwise turn into methane and go into the atmosphere and eliminating the emissions from those waste streams, not only are we eliminating the emissions from the transportation, not only are we put creating uh molecules that have a CI score of about nine grams per megajoule, which is a 90% reduction that is after the transport to Europe. Uh you know, and not only are we doing this at a cost point that is uh you know uh equal or on par with like Heffesaf today, uh, we are helping to recover the Brazilian ecosystem, which is why I think Brazil is a fantastic country. And uh that is my shot on goal for this one.

SPEAKER_00

Good shot on goal. I think it's definitely on target. If anyone's got any other points they want to make for Brazil, for England, write it down. We can I can pose it to our finalists. Andrew, you're half. It might have to be a comeback victory for the ages, but you could make history. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Um I think that's not a great start, but I I agree with quite a lot of Trevor's points, to be honest. I think there's a lot of talk in the UK and the EU around getting the government to help in terms of the cost, but we really need to focus on getting the cost down. Um and and part of the challenge around getting projects in Europe and the UK to bankability is the cost is high and it you know that just makes them inherently unbankable, even if the policy's there, because essentially the banks are like, oh, is this policy gonna stay? So I think that is a real challenge for for the UK and and the EU. Um and and it's a really difficult decision for the policymakers to make because ultimately the consumers want SAF and they want it as cheap as possible. And if that's imported, then that doesn't solve their other objective, which is to get some domestic production. Um and that's where I think we think the art the revenue services mechanism would be better served in you know, doing a larger number of smaller plants that demonstrate technologies that can have exportable um technologies in them that could have actually even more impact rather than just focusing on one or two megaplants that are going to be completely out of the money compared to places like Brazil or Asia. The big problem though with with Brazil and and other uh countries across Asia is the standards and ultimately these countries are incredibly important for biodiversity. The Amazon is still decreasing. It may be decreasing at a faster rate because of climate change as well. And and this problem is not going to go away. So the the the criticism is always going to be around the standards and the land use impact of using these countries that are so important to biodiversity. And of course, yeah, Brazil can do everything for the world. But what would the consequence be for Europe in having no production itself? And also, can you really say that you've not displaced something else that has had a knock-on impact and it you know caused further deforestation? Um land in the UK is not equivalent on a carbon basis to land in the Amazon for in terms of the biodiversity and the the importance to the planet as a whole, in terms of uh you know what what happens on it in terms of what what we choose to grow on it. Um so I'll pause there. I I probably didn't defend uh the you know ourselves that much, but I do think it's

Winner, Acceptance Speech, Closing

SPEAKER_04

actually an important debate.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think you did a did a good job, Trevor.

SPEAKER_06

And here, I'll I'll add one more thing because uh you know if we're talking you know, not just like country versus country and trying to score goals, uh, you know, I I will say that uh the mandates that have been put in place by the UK and the EU are driving uh the global SAF market in a way that uh other countries simply can't claim. You know, I can uh I can note the Brazilian mandate, but they are not driving near the activity that the uh UK and EU mandates are. So so a little hey, a little group hug here at the group hug.

SPEAKER_04

And actually, I mean, just talking, we've talked so about Brazil and France and the UK. I mean, US needs to come to the South Party as soon as it decides to come. You the US is definitely going to be doing South. It's just a question of kind of when the kind of politics there changes and gets behind it because it's got all the free stocks and it can easily export to Europe.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. They're they're definitely having a tough time right now. Trevor, as soon as you started bigging up European and UK mandates, England started getting more votes. So I don't know what that says about.

SPEAKER_06

Oh, but they're all satisfying it through me.

SPEAKER_05

Like, don't forget that no, I'm kidding. So uh this is the grand final.

SPEAKER_00

There is a huge prize at stake for the winner, bragging rights, so big prize on the line. Um, get your votes in if you are watching. I hope everyone enjoyed this. Let us know if you you enjoyed this, if you want us to do something similar again. Um I'll give everyone a couple of minutes. It's quite a close final, so that's in that's encouraging. It's I love that. I think we might have yeah, it was definitely a good game. It was a good watch. Absolutely. Well, it looks I have to say, it looks like penalties is a it might be a penalties job, at least extra time. We'll say it went to extra time, but I think we'll call it there. And um in extra time, Brazil managed to nab a late goal, scrambled one over the line. So, Trevor, you and Brazil and Syzygy are the SAF and Vesta SAF World Cup champions for now. We might see if we might do it again, who knows? Um but so what congratulations. Do you have an exceptance speech? Uh no acceptance speech, you're just gonna walk into the sunset.

SPEAKER_06

Uh so uh and apologies, my my uh internet chopped out for a second, but uh you know, I I would like to first off uh thank all of the other competitors. You know, this is a uh group effort, and uh there is no one company or no one country that can make SAF happen. You know, I uh couldn't represent Brazil without the demand coming from uh EU and UK. And uh it takes there is no silver bullet, there is no single technology that will make SAF work. It takes technologies for many players, like all of us on this call. Uh, like I said, there's no silver bullet, but there might be enough silver buckshot to get the job done. And I think with our collective efforts and an entire world working together in a uh collective market, we're gonna get there. I do see a SAF tipping point coming in the next 10 years or so, and uh it is the people on this call that are gonna make that happen.

SPEAKER_00

Awesome. That what a great note to end on. That is a great summary, and it remains for me to say thank you, all the speakers, for being so insightful. Thank you, everyone for coming and listening. And um, yeah, hopefully we do this again soon. So um, everyone enjoy the rest of your day and we'll see you soon.