Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Julie Minns and Amanda Hack

Committee stage
Tuesday 15th July 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Amanda Hack]

Q Obviously, when you are looking at green investment, there is a huge element of risk in new technologies. Are there other levers of Government that would de-risk them from an infrastructure point of view, or are there other things that we could do on top of the Bill to de-risk it?

Josh Garton: Yes, I think there are. As I said, the revenue certainty mechanism seeks to address price risk primarily. The mandate deals with volume, and it provides that volume certainty in the market. When we think of the second and third-generation fuels that we need to develop to meet the aviation decarbonisation targets, these are somewhat novel technologies—in fact, they are novel technologies—and there is no market for the fuel at the moment. That means the technologies themselves are not commercially mature yet, so even with a revenue certainty mechanism in place, there is still a level of technology risk that some investors are not willing to tolerate at this point in time.

We need further support to help the first-of-a-kind projects get through FID, even with the revenue certainty mechanism in place. That can include deploying things like first-loss guarantees, or other forms of Government involvement, such as being the first lender through something like the NWF taking a slightly more risk-on approach to the financing of these first-of-a-kind projects. That way we can prove that the technologies are commercially viable, and then help scale the sector.

[Ms Minns]

Q This is a similar question to Mr Reed’s. Would you say that UK SAF developers find it harder, easier or the same as their international counterparts to access finance?

Josh Garton: The UK compared with Europe?