UK-based SAF start-up Firefly Green Fuels has announced the signing of several MOUs with industrial partners that progress its plan to turn raw human waste into SAF.

At a conference in London, the company revealed that it had formed an agreement to produce the fuel at the Haltermann Carless refinery in Harwich, on the East Coast of England. Additionally, it has signed deals with energy services company Petrofac and oil major Chevron Lummus Global (CLG). CLG will provide refinery infrastructure, designed to optimise efficiency and flexibility the minimum of emissions.

The plan is to use the Harwich facility to produce the new SAF at a modest scale while the relevant approvals are being sought, but in time to expand into a much larger refinery once the technology has been proven and further investment has been raised.

READ: Wizz Air, Cepsa partner to accelerate SAF supply development

A further agreement has been reached with utility company Anglian Water which has committed to provide Firefly with the waste that will be used as feedstock for the planned pilot facility.

Separately, Wizz Air announced in late 2023 that it was to invest £5m into Firefly, with the intention to buy up to 525,000 tonnes of it’s fuel over 15 years.

“The signing of these agreements marks a significant leap forward in realising our ambitions to develop a sustainable SAF industry here in the UK,” remarked James Hygate, Firefly’s CEO. “Opening up this new sewage pathway will bring new jobs and growth to the UK, helping us to secure a greener and more prosperous future.”

He added that commercial production at Harwich was likely to begin in ‘2028 or 2029’.

If the company succeeds in producing this novel fuel at a significant scale, there should be no shortage of demand in Europe. Airports across the continent find it difficult to buy enough SAF to meet demands from airlines, which are under pressure both from lawmakers and the travelling public to find ways of reducing carbon emissions.

The UK government has a target for airlines to use 10% SAF by 2030, an amount that most expect to be missed due to a lack of commercial availability of the fuel. It has also stated an ambition to get ‘at least five’ commercial scale refinery plants under construction by 2025.