Farnborough Airport (FAB) has announced a new deal with Hydrogen Refinery to provide 12.5 million litres of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) per annum.
The deal will see the two parties produce & provide roughly 10,000 tonnes of SAF from local waste sources each year, expanding on FAB’s current status as one of the sector’s most significant suppliers of the alternative fuel source.
Simon Geere, CEO at Farnborough Airport, commented:We are delighted to be forging this ground-breaking alliance with e-fuels developer Hydrogen Refinery. Their patented technology has the potential to provide Farnborough Airport with enough proprietary supplies of SAF for us to become the first and only airport in the world to be offering fuel with a 20% blend across its entire supply by 2028, well ahead of the UK Government’s own target of 10% by 2030.
What’s more, this is entirely consistent with our ambitions to be an incubator for the advancement of sustainable technologies, as well as being a vital commercial enabler for kick-starting the domestic refining of SAF, at scale and right here within the UK.
The transition to new fuelling technologies like this requires markets like ours which are able to sustain the higher upfront investment costs necessary to make things happen. Farnborough Airport is in a unique position to advance this technology given the smaller-modern aircraft which we handle and the significant economic value of the flights we support.
As a local company, Hydrogen Refinery exemplify the deep-rooted technological capabilities of the companies which form part of Farnborough Airport’s aeronautical research heritage, and this is a fantastic example of a partnership which will generate significant local inward investment and will reinforce our ambitions to become a Global Sustainability Showcase for Airports around the world.
The deal’s announcement comes in the wake of new legislation-backed mandates signed by both the UK and European Union on the amount of SAF legally required to be used from January 2025, as well as the way in which the fuel must be produced going forward.
With this in mind; FAB has stated it has chosen to partner with Hydrogen Refinery due to their capability to produce carbon negative SAF from a variety of mixed waste products either sourced locally or from larger landfill sites as opposed to waste cooking oil or Hydro processed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA).
Stephen Voller, CEO at Hydrogen Refinery, commented:We live in a throwaway society, and waste such as mixed plastics and municipal solid waste (MSW) continues to rise despite efforts towards recycling. Hydrogen Refinery has a unique process called the plasma electrolyser system (PES) that can process mixed waste, including airline passenger food waste, into SAF. This is not only a low-cost process but is also carbon negative because the waste is processed without the emissions from incineration or landfill. We are excited to be working with Farnborough Airport to make their vision of sustainability a reality.
In 2022, Farnborough Airport became the first airport in the world to offer SAF for the same price as Jet A1 fuel as part of a two-week trial period leading up to its biennial Farnborough International Airshow.
