Green Fuels, Green Skies (GFGS) Competition – £15 million competition to support the production of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) in the UK

Green Fuels, Green Skies (GFGS) Competition

As part of his Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, the Prime Minister announced on 18 November 2020 a:

…£15 million competition to support the production of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) in the UK, building on the success of the Future Fuels for Flight and Freight Competition (F4C).

This competition was launched on 16 March 2021 by the Department for Transport (DfT) to support the development of the emerging UK sector on its pathway to production of SAF at scale.

The Green Fuels, Green Skies competition will provide up to £15 million in grant funding to UK SAF projects during the 2021/22 financial year. Specifically, it will look to support the early-stage development of UK SAF plants, referred to as “Front End Engineering Design (FEED)”, “Pre-FEED” and “Feasibility Study” stages of a project’s development life cycle.
Figure 1. Project lifecycle stages for a SAF plant and GFGS competition focus

The competition will have a key focus on supporting activities related to the development of First-Of-A-Kind (FOAK) commercial SAF plants in the UK, but will also be open to demonstration scale SAF projects and will allocate up to £2m in funding for projects at the feasibility stage of development across these scales.

The Green Fuels, Green Skies competition is open to applications until 31 May 2021. The competition guidance document is available at the bottom of this page to download. The competition application form and associated templates will be made available from 24 March 2021.

The Green Fuels, Green Skies competition will be administered and managed on behalf of the DfT by the competition delivery partners Ricardo Energy & Environment and E4tech. Those interested in the SAF competition should register their interest by emailing [email protected] to ensure you are kept up to date as the scheme progresses.

The following diagram and table outline key dates and stages of the GFGS competition, from initial interest to the expected end of the competition’s Funding Period.Figure 1: GFGS Competition process

Table 1: Stages of the GFGS competition

Background
The UK has challenging goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In transport, the electrification of vehicles will have a key role, but the aviation sector currently has few alternatives to using liquid fossil fuels.

In addition, an independent Feasibility Study commissioned by the DfT from E4tech & Ricardo-EE (via an ARUP/AECOM consortium) has indicated that early and decisive action could enable the UK, with our research and engineering expertise, to claim a share of a global SAF market that could support substantial UK low carbon growth.

A high-level analysis indicates that this could generate between £700m and £1,660m in GVA, with potentially half of this being generated from the export of IP and the provision of engineering services. This industry could create between 5,000 and 11,000 green jobs, and furthermore, replacing imported kerosene with domestically produced SAF would increase fuel security and have a net positive impact on the UK’s balance of payments

The GFGS competition has been designed to aid the UK SAF industry to realise this potential. For more context, please see the competition guidance document.

Objectives

The key objective of the GFGS competition is to:
Support the development of the UK SAF sector towards the deployment of innovative SAF production technologies at commercial scale that are capable of reducing emissions from the aviation sector in the UK within the near-term.

The objectives for projects receiving financial support are:

• Technology demonstration: materially progress a project towards First-Of-A-Kind (FOAK) commercial production of an eligible SAF pathway.
• Fuel production: materially develop a project with the capability to produce commercially significant volumes of SAF, including for the purposes of attaining certification.
• Commercial potential: materially develop a strategy for commercialising the technology and the products from the project, demonstrating the potential for significant value to the UK.
• Emissions reduction: demonstrate the potential for greenhouse gas reductions of a technology pathway vs a fossil fuel equivalent.
• Project execution: bring together a team with the necessary expertise and experience to deliver the project according to its objectives.

Competition documents

Please download competition documents using the links below.

• GFGS guidance document(PDF)
• GFGS application form – available 24 March 2021 (MS Word)
  • GFGS templates to accompany applications – available 24 March 2021 (MS Excel)