Government to invest £15 million in development of eco-friendly jet fuel

The UK government has launched a £15 million competition for projects designed to develop eco-friendly, low-emission jet fuel produced from waste. Companies and start-ups are invited to bid for development funding from the £15 million pot and will present plans for “first-of-a-kind” production facilities to be used to make fuel from waste products including household rubbish and wood offcuts and chips.

The plant designs should also use eco-friendly energy sources like excess electricity and flue gases from industry. The Department for Transport, which is behind the funding and competition, believes that jet fuels produced from waste products using excess energy that would otherwise be wasted could reduce emissions by as much as 70% compared to traditional jet fuels. It is also hoped that a new low-emissions jet fuel industry could create up to 11,500 new jobs in the UK.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps this week presented details of the competition at a meeting of the Jet Zero Council, a government-industry partnership that aims to “fast-track zero-emission flight”.

The move isn’t without controversy with environmental campaign groups calling into question how scalable production of sustainable, low-emission jet fuels made from waste and excess energy would practically be. There have been accusations the high-emissions industry is attempting to “greenwash” its activities through token, but highly publicised gestures, as the competition is presumably suspected of counting as.

However, most opposition has been raised in regard to biofuels made from plants due to the large volumes of crops that need to be grown to provide the raw material the fuel is made from. There is concern that could not lead to increased levels of deforestation, and other ways of repurposing land for intense agriculture in especially developing economies. If food crops prove less profitable than crops for biofuel it could also lead to rising food prices, hitting poorer nations and communities hardest.

By contrast, the kind of new biofuels made from waste products the “Green Fuel, Green Skies”, competition is backing avoids that trade-off.

The aviation industry itself is also developing inhouse projects to create jet fuel from household waste. One backed by energy giant BP, itself making a major push towards a low carbon future (it has promised to become a net carbon neutral energy company by 2050), is using rubbish to create fuel at Cheshire’s Stanlow refinery.

In February British Airways also announced an investment in a plant in the state of Georgia in the USA that will make jet fuel from ethanol from agricultural and other waste.