Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill

John Cooper Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Collins (Worcester) (Lab)]

I will speak to new clause 1. Context is important, as this Bill is a first step on a long pathway to decarbonising aviation. At the moment, SAF components are blended with existing fossil fuels to create usable aircraft fuel, as I will go on to discuss, but I think it is helpful for us to be aware of the context: the various generations of sustainable aviation fuel that will form a road map as we move into the future.

First-generation aviation fuels use oils, often of biological origin, as feedstocks, and they produce a kerosene-type fuel that can be blended with our existing jet fuel. Second-generation SAF is derived from solid waste that goes through a digestion process, producing alcohols that can then be formulated into aviation fuel-type products. Third-generation fuels—I remind hon. Members that there are four generations—use wet mass as feedstock. Again, that wet mass might be biological, but it is incapable of competing with food crops for production, and the process produces an output that is much like a bio-crude oil.

As we move through the generations of sustainable aviation fuel production, it is important to remember that the outputs are different and are able to slip into different parts of the existing fuel production supply chain. The fourth generation is derived from gases, maybe even atmospheric gases, such as carbon dioxide drawn from the atmosphere. It is often referred to as a power-to-liquids process, and is an entirely non-biological process that requires a lot of new technology. It is a future solution, but an advantageous and attractive one as it can provide us with a purely synthetic fuel.

The point that I am illustrating is that the Bill is the first step in a long-term vision for aviation, in which sustainable aviation fuel is able to play a progressively larger role. In future, we may even move to different fuels all together. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on hydrogen, I would like to give a shout-out to its role in the potential long-term future of power for aviation.

These generations of fuels also interact with the technology in our aircraft. Although current blends of sustainable aviation fuel can go into aircraft now, the aircraft will need to be upgraded as we move to higher fractions of sustainable components in that fuel, because some of the aromatic components in fossil fuels are not available in synthetic fuels. They are currently required by some of the seals in the engines, and the aircraft will need to move into future generations to accept high proportions of aviation fuel.

All of this is about having a strategic road map. The Bill is one step—one vastly enabling piece of legislation—and it follows a model that is well proven to help establish new technologies as part of a green and sustainable future. We have seen the similar progress in offshore wind, for example, where it has been utterly transformational beyond anybody’s expectations. This vehicle should be able to do similar things for the beginning of our journey on decarbonising aviation, but it needs a long-term plan. That is why there is a really important piece of work to be done in the secondary legislation enabled by the Bill. It is very important that that legislation takes account of all the factors being discussed through the various amendments that have been tabled.

I oppose new clause 1, because we must not oversimplify the journey before us. In fact, we must allow the Government the freedom to create a sophisticated, technically-led strategy to deploy these different types of sustainable aviation fuel, taking into account all factors, including our existing infrastructure, the production of biomass and the advancement of aviation technology. If we get this right, and if this game is played well, we have the opportunity to start successfully—and even lead—a journey that will be absolutely transformative, and to envisage a thriving, positive and sustainable future for aviation.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

For many years, I commuted by aircraft from Scotland to Dublin—so many years, in fact, that I can still recall there are eight emergency exits on a Boeing 737-800. There are two at the front, two at the rear and four over-wing exits. What a great pity that this Bill does not have an amendment that is an escape slide.

While sustainable aviation fuel sounds wonderful, it is burdened with many inconvenient facts. The first is that there is no SAF production industry at the scale required. While new clause 1 is a bold attempt to jump-start production by repurposing old facilities, it is a jumbo jet of a task. The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2030, global demand for SAF is expected to reach 70 million tonnes per annum—around 4% to 5% of total jet fuel consumption.

Meeting likely demand in just five years requires an additional 5.8 million tonnes of capacity. What is the investment required to reach even that relatively modest goal? The WEF pitches it at somewhere between $19 billion and $45 billion globally. If that does not give our legislative autopilot the warning, “Terrain! Terrain! Pull up!”, then it should do. New clause 1 is unaffordable, whether backed by public or private finance, and I am afraid it is doomed to fail.

It is certain that the vast input costs will result in massively higher costs for passengers and air freight. I support the vital new clause 6, which would force an assessment of the economic impact of this Bill, which I fear will be nothing short of devastating. Some might piously accept fewer flights to the Costas or a little less airfreighted Kenyan mangetout on the dinner table, but making air travel ruinously expensive will have implications for thousands of jobs—millions globally—in not only aviation, but tourism. Many flights are not indulgences, but lifelines. We are an island nation, and many communities within the UK are entirely reliant on air links.

Will Britain—so long the pioneers of aviation, with a history stretching back to the first scheduled international passenger flight and the first jet airliner—be foremost in SAF? Probably not, for mandating SAF is easier than producing it, especially in a country with power prices as exorbitant as ours. Energy bills in Dumfries in my constituency are four times what they are in Dumfries in Virginia in the United States, and they are cheaper still in China.

We need a lot of power to make SAF. Many question its green credentials when so much carbon is generated in its production. Amendment 10 is a bid to explore the serious issues around SAF derived from either organic or synthetic sources. Much is made of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases using SAF sourced from waste fat and oil feedstocks, but, as we have heard, those basic building blocks are in limited supply. That issue is also addressed in, though not solved by, new clause 2. Using crops as feedstock may not reduce greenhouse gases at all, and there are huge implications of turning prime agricultural land and billions of gallons of water over to producing crops for fuel, rather than food. Again, Britain is at a disadvantage. America’s vast corn belt might get involved, but the British bioethanol industry is a warning to us, for it was not able to survive on current targets for the content in road fuel.

Other amendments, including amendment 11, concern themselves with how a revenue certainty mechanism will operate. My concern is that we risk creating a self-licking ice cream—a self-perpetuating system with no purpose other than to sustain itself. This Bill could guarantee moneys that simply offset the costs of manufacturing SAF, which is itself made expensive by green levies. Would it not be better to put what money we have available into aviation excellence, driving up the efficiency of jet engines and airframes? Aviation is already playing its part in reducing its carbon footprint—according to some experts, engine efficiency is already up by as much as 83% from the early days of the de Havilland Comet jet liner. That progress can continue, although super-efficient jets need superalloys to handle the extremes of temperature in their engines, and those require the sorts of rare earths that China is hoovering up. Canada, by the way, has many of the same critical minerals; might we be better off investing in those than subsidising SAF?

If we want really big carbon savings, we ought to look to the sea. Much of what we trade—in and out—goes by sea, and cargo ships are heavily reliant on bunker oil, a tar-like substance with heavy emissions. If we want novel fuels, this island nation should look once more to Tennyson’s “boundless deep”, where the salt-caked smoke stacks belch still. Meanwhile, the wild blue yonder of the skies must not be made inaccessible simply by expensive green dogma.

[Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Aviation is central to our economy and our way of life, whether it is delivering well over 300,000 jobs here in the UK, contributing over £22 billion to our economy, driving inbound tourism, or connecting communities, businesses and families the world over. I am proud of our world-leading aviation sector in Derby and many other places across the UK, and while aviation is an integral part of our economy, it is also one of the most challenging to decarbonise. Despite the scale of the challenge, though, we must keep pushing forward, because—as I have said before, and as I will say again now—without net zero in aviation, there is no net zero, full stop.

To ensure that future generations are able to access the opportunities that air travel can provide, we need to make sure that flying is greener. This Bill does exactly that. It will unlock the potential of UK SAF by delivering the confidence and stability that SAF producers need to continue to turbocharge growth as they drive forward green innovation. I welcome the Bill as a clear statement of intent that this country is absolutely serious about decarbonising the future and future-proofing our world-leading aviation sector. It is the right thing to do, and we must do it.