Seeking SAF symphony: In conversation with Firefly’s Paul Hilditch
Paul Hilditch
COO & Co-Founder
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Firefly Green Fuels
Ahead of the launch of PA Consulting’s report on scaling sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), our series of exclusive interviews brings together views from key stakeholders across the SAF ecosystem. This includes producers, airlines, airports, and investors from across the globe.
Here, we speak to Paul Hilditch, COO and co-founder of Firefly, a UK company which has been involved in research and development of sustainable fuels since 2013. The company will be opening its first SAF production plant by the end of the decade.
What type of SAF is Firefly developing – and why?
We're developing a new route to SAF using sewage biosolids as feedstock. We've been doing this for a few years now – as a company we originated about 20 years ago in road biofuels. So, we've been in the business a while.
There are two problems with SAF at the moment in my view. There isn't enough SAF on the open market. And what there is too expensive. You could make more SAF, but it'd be too expensive for anyone to buy and so on. We looked at different routes over the years. We spent quite a long time looking at HEFA (Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids), for example, and concluded that, as well as being a crowded marketplace, it wasn't going to be the right route, at least not in the UK setting.
So, we chose sewage biosolids as a feedstock. It's basically a very low value product and there’s loads of it. Our conversion technology isn’t super complicated and is not as expensive as others. Therefore, we’ve got a really good chance of making affordable SAF. We're going through ASTM qualification at the moment. We're also going through engineering and pilot and demonstration stages. Bottom line, we're going to be producing SAF by 2028 or 2029 in Harwich in Essex. That's going to be producing roughly 50,000 tonnes of SAF a year.
How important do you think regulation and different regulatory factors are for scaling SAF? From what I can see, you have to have something like we have in the UK: a mandate which is supported by a tradeable certificate mechanism. Having a mandate alone or a target alone is not enough. You have to have some way of supporting the industry in its early stages. And the UK Government has promised to consult on a revenue certainty mechanism, which is always going to be a good way of getting projects to the final investment decision (FID).
Are there any specific challenges apart from financing and cost you’d highlight as causing barriers to widespread deployment of SAF?
We would say feedstock is the key. With waste-derived HEFA, using waste oils and fats, there's a limited supply of feed, so there is a limit. If you're prepared to include crop-derived fuels, then you know there's no theoretical limit to what you can produce. And you've got to think of feedstock as including things like hydrogen and power.
The EU has put a lot of policy behind power to liquid (PtL) fuels, which is great, provided you've got adequate renewable power and you've got a source of hydrogen. These things are all in short supply.
How have you been working with airlines?
We have an offtake agreement with Wizz Air. When we were working that offtake agreement through with them, we both wanted to make it as solid and tangible as possible. There are elements in there, for example, of having a floor price and having a take or pay. And it's a long-term agreement – it has a 15-year tenure which is quite unusual in the industry. You know, we were trying to make it as bankable as possible.
How do you see the market evolving over the next 10 years?
In the UK, I think the supply of HEFA SAF is going to plateau. Basically, the industry is going to need to look to second-generation fuels. It's going to need to see some progress on power to liquid fuels.
I think it will be interesting to see which way the fossil fuel majors go. As a developer who's not a fossil fuel company, or financed by a fossil fuel company, I'm quite happy. If you're an oil company now, you have one mandate, which is to keep doing the day job. There's a disincentive at the moment for oil companies to be getting into this area, which means we're not likely to be beaten up by the likes of Shell, BP, and Aramco because they won't be playing in our space. But, on the downside, maybe that means there's less money being put into this sector.
If you had one recommendation to the whole industry to make this work, what would it be?
I would like the UK Government to support the homegrown SAF industry through devices like the National Wealth Fund. So, it's the big-ticket stuff, rather than grant funding. And I would say to the industry as a whole: don’t give up on SAF just because in the short term it would be cheaper to do other things like planting trees.
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Paul was one voice among a cast of producers we surveyed, where:
- 93 percent say that as industry they have a responsibility to make significant progress with SAF by 2030
- 91 percent see limited production capacity or supply constraints as a barrier to increasing SAF adoption
- 61 percent identified government and regulators and the stakeholders with the highest potential for accelerating SAF adoption.