Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting).
Greg Smith (Conservative)
Doug McKiernan: On the first part of the question, given my knowledge of the sector as an engineer, I do not believe that there is a long-term solution other than power to liquid. At the moment, in the ASTM fuel standards, there are a lot of bio-based, sugar-based and food-waste solutions. In my view, those are not truly scalable, and their cost will only ever go up, because of the shortage of land and so on. The power-to-liquid side is truly scalable. The feedstock is air, water and renewable energy. It is extremely clean, and it gives the industry the opportunity—in, say, 10 or 15 years’ time—to move to fuels that are even more performant than current fossil-based fuels.
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Graeme Downie (Labour)
Doug McKiernan: Without this Bill and the mandate and quotas that have been set, I think the investment industry will step back from that, which would hurt us as a company. We would not be able to scale up. It would make things extremely difficult and would push the pace at which we could get to net zero to the right.
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Luke Taylor (Liberal Democrat)
What is happening in the aviation area is clearer cut, because you cannot get the energy density into an aircraft with hydrogen or electric, so it is kind of obvious, but I think it is a solution for a lot of the fossil-based fuels, including gasoline and diesel. I think what we will end up doing is that, if we can develop that core technology, it is then transferable to other sectors, and with that we will be able to deal with the real problem, which is the end-to-end solution of getting renewable energy to the consumer. That is the real challenge.
At the moment, we are talking about sustainable aviation fuel, but actually there is a lot of energy in the North sea that is not getting used because of the challenge of the cost of getting it from there to the consumer. This is where e-fuels come in. The Bill would help to move us in the right direction to start to tackle that problem, because you would have these companies with the new tech working out how to make that viable. There is a very good, well researched paper by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US and the Department of Energy. It was done back in 2021.
I had a conversation with our CEO and the board one day and realised, “We’re not actually a fuels company, although we’re called Zero Petroleum and we’re making jet fuel and gasoline. We’re actually an energy transmission company, because all the problems we have with renewable energy are solved by liquid hydrocarbons”. If you look at the paper I referred to, done back in 2021, the cost of getting energy from the North sea in a cable to the consumer is probably forty to fiftyfold what it is if you wanted to do it with a liquid hydrocarbon. That is the fundamental problem that we are going to struggle with going forward. We are slowly going to morph as technology and engineering rather than policy dictate what the solution is.
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Luke Taylor (Liberal Democrat)
Doug McKiernan: Correct. Within that report, there were also comparisons to hydrogen—that was a sixfold increase over a two-foot oil pipeline—and to ethanol, methanol and ammonia. It looked at how you get energy from A to B in the cheapest operational expenditure and capital expenditure form. That is a fundamental. The cost of getting the renewable energy is what all the engineering will come back to. I believe the renewable energy will be in remote locations, a bit like oil today. Ultimately, we are going to put renewable energy in those places. Hopefully we do not cover all the fertile soil with solar panels and we can generate it elsewhere, and then use the power-to-liquids to get it from A to B.
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Paul Kohler (Liberal Democrat)
Doug McKiernan: To be perfectly transparent with everybody, with carbon dioxide at the moment I think the direct air capture, compared with where we are, is a bit of an Achilles heel. It is probably around two to four years behind in its scale-up, in terms of being able to keep pace with our scale-up, but actually there is plenty of biogenic carbon dioxide around for large-scale commercial plants here in the UK, which could be a stepping stone to the direct air capture. A lot of the work with direct air capture at the moment talks about the cost of it; you can sequestrate the carbon dioxide in the ground. That is not what we want to do as a petroleum company; we want to put that carbon dioxide into a liquid fuel, and then it is net zero. You have carbon dioxide and water coming out of the exhaust—whether that is a turbine or internal combustion engine. If you capture the carbon dioxide again with the direct air capture, you are then net zero.
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14:25 Graeme Downie (Labour)
We absolutely support the Bill because additional SAF production in the UK is going to be helpful for decarbonising the aviation sector, and we very much support that. Additional supply projects in the UK are going to be very helpful to meet the targets and help decarbonise the aviation industry. Yes, we very much support the Bill.
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Tom Collins (Labour)
Q You have just mentioned that you are looking broadly at SAF production and how that is going to play out into the future. Compared with other northern European countries, the UK has excellent access to renewable energy, and we had a very early responding hydrogen industry. What do you see as the UK’s unique opportunities in SAF production?
Ruben van Grinsven: There are two elements. One is the fundamentals: affordable renewable energy, other feedstocks, then the cost of building plants, labour, and everything else. At the moment, in terms of the fundamentals of renewable electricity, the UK does not have a clear advantage because power prices are slightly more expensive, and most of the renewable power in the UK is intermittent. That is an important thing that needs to be overcome.
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Chris Vince (Labour)
If you want to continue decarbonising aviation, you need additional forms of SAF—and that is where the second and third generations come in. We need to start developing those now, to learn how it is done and establish the technology and the fundamentals behind it. Starting that now is essential, and doing it in the UK could potentially give you a head start. If you do this before everybody else, you would have a technological and commercial head start, which could be an advantage.
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Greg Smith (Conservative)
Matt Gorman: Let me start by saying that we take this issue very seriously, for the reasons you have outlined. It is central to our business. SAF is key to delivering the industry’s net zero transition plan: it is about 40% of the solution. I do not think that anyone can forecast the future costs and prices with exact certainty, but I will say that we test all our demand forecasts for Heathrow against a range of different carbon price scenarios, from low to high—“high” being the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s high scenarios. We do that because it is important for us to understand and our investors to understand, and because climate disclosure legislation now requires us to share that information in our annual report. We have concluded that demand for flying from Heathrow remains robust even in high carbon price scenarios in future. We are confident about that.
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Greg Smith (Conservative)
Matt Gorman: It is a good question. We welcome the Bill. As SAF is so important, the sector and Heathrow have advocated over a number of years both the mandate, which was passed as legislation at the beginning of the year, and the revenue certainty mechanism. It has benefits for energy security, green jobs, growth and decarbonisation. That has been one of the drivers for the sector to support it. The decarbonisation benefits are clear. On jobs and growth, earlier witnesses talked about the industry studies showing up to £10 billion of GVA and 60,000 jobs by 2050.
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Julia Buckley (Labour)
Q I have two questions. The first relates to your role on the board of Sustainable Aviation. You referred earlier to the key part the Bill plays in decarbonisation and reaching net zero. On behalf of that board, from the wider sector perspective, do you think that it is possible to reach net zero by 2050 without the Bill?
Matt Gorman: That is a good question. We have not studied it in those terms. We have published a plan to get to net zero, and there are four key tools in the toolkit. SAF is one; zero-emission and hydrogen-powered aircraft are others. More efficient aircraft and more efficient operations deliver a huge amount, and there are greenhouse gas removals for anything that we cannot cut within the sector.
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Julia Buckley (Labour)
Matt Gorman: It would be much more difficult to produce in the UK; all the investors and fuel suppliers we talk to say so. There are huge advantages in doing that—for jobs, growth and energy security, as well as for decarbonisation .
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Luke Taylor (Liberal Democrat)
Q My question is relatively straightforward: does the Bill go far enough to allow us to proceed with aviation expansion and be consistent with our climate change goals?
Matt Gorman: This Bill is part of a package of measures from the Government, and I think it is absolutely vital. I see the Bill and the SAF mandate as equally important, with the SAF mandate driving a requirement for 10% SAF and with the Bill encouraging investment in domestic production. Those are vital tools, and the Government are taking a range of other steps. I am not here as a spokesperson for the Government, but the jet zero strategy outlines a range of measures to support the ongoing development of more efficient aircraft, which is a key tool in our toolkit, along with modernising airspace with the new UK airspace design service, which is vital for more efficient airspace, and support for new hydrogen technology and greenhouse gas removal. This is a vital part of that package.
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Luke Taylor (Liberal Democrat)
To answer your question, Heathrow has been invited by the Government to submit updated proposals for our expansion plans by the end of this month. Within them, we will be setting out our views on our future trajectory to net zero. We think that the mandate and the revenue certainty mechanism are vital. The Government have already said that they want to keep the mandate levels under review; you are right that although we are more ambitious to begin with and the EU is less ambitious, the EU takes over. Our view is that heading more in the direction of the EU’s ambition over time will be important for Heathrow and for aviation generally, but we will keep that under review.
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Amanda Hack (Labour)
Matt Gorman: It is a great question. All the evidence from our polling of customers, as well as what we read in regular polls and consumer surveys, shows that people are broadly concerned about climate change and environmental issues generally. In terms of aviation, they see that there is a role for customers, but they are clear that the industry needs to set out a plan and take action. They understand that airports do not necessarily fly planes, but that we clearly have a responsibility. They expect us to set out the plan, communicate it and take action at the airport where we can. In that sense, all the evidence shows that consumers support us taking action.
As the answer to an earlier question alluded to, the net zero transition will have some costs to consumers. The challenge is how we keep those costs as low as possible while reaching the goal of net zero. I think the balance of the mandate and the revenue certainty mechanism is well designed to achieve that. We think that domestic production in the long term so we are not reliant on imports—we have discussed the energy security angle—is a good way of helping to manage price certainty in future. Consumers are supportive, engaged and willing to pay a bit more to support the transition to net zero, but the industry and Government need to take action to manage it cost-effectively.
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Amanda Hack (Labour)
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.
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15:10 Luke Taylor (Liberal Democrat)
Q I want to be very careful with this question. We have had questions about investors and appetites to put money into these technologies—into refineries, production and particular projects. There was previously a fairly strong consensus on the need to address climate change, and this is one of the projects that we are doing to mitigate those impacts. There is a fair amount of rhetoric at the moment about stopping investment in net zero projects in particular regions, some of which have a heavy dependency on or a high frequency of these sorts of projects—north Lincolnshire, Humberside and such areas. Is there a risk that that sort of rhetoric damages investor confidence and that, with that sort of language and those sorts of pronouncements being made, we see challenges in delivering the jobs and the plants and seeing the capacity that we need come online?
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15:21 Julie Minns (Labour)
Philip New: This is quite a challenging conundrum. Right now, the safe place to put your waste is into an incinerator to make electrons. Is that the best place for the journey to net zero or for the local authority’s long-term economics? That is less obvious. It is difficult to put all the obligation on the local authorities to make the right, wise, long-term choice, when they are dealing with some very short-term pressures. This is where I think some extra signals—whether through some kind of mechanism that gives them comfort that they will be kept whole if things do not work out as planned, or some adjustment to the waste hierarchy—could play a helpful role.
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15:22 David Reed (Conservative)
Especially coming out of the big, beautiful Bill, America is out of the game. That is kind of a good thing at one level, because it means that, particularly with the way the mandate is designed around second-generation SAFs, we now have a globally unique position. We could therefore become an incubator for a series of technologies that will have to play a significant role in aviation decarbonisation over the next couple of decades. The bad news is that if we fail to get this new industry kick-started, I do not think we can hope to rely on imports from somewhere else to get us out of trouble. It will mean that we will not meet our mandate targets.
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15:24 David Reed (Conservative)
Philip New: No. For most global markets that have started to look at SAF, the preferred mechanism has been to impose some form of mandate—even China has put in place the beginnings of a mandate mechanism. None of them are as ambitious as those in Europe and the UK, but that is the normal mechanism. The reason for that is simply that SAF costs more than aviation fuel. Left to its own devices, an airline in a very competitive industry is unlikely to voluntarily buy more SAF than it needs to buy. If it has big corporate clients that want to offset some of their scope 3 emissions and are willing to pay a premium to have their flights decarbonised, that is fine, but there is a real limit to how big, dependable and investable that market will be.
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15:35 Greg Smith (Conservative)
Q Good afternoon. Does the Bill get that balance right? Will it increase UK production of SAF to the point that we have domestic fuel security, or is there a better way of decarbonising aviation fuel?
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15:42 Greg Smith (Conservative)
Professor Maslin : We take the very large view that the only way to make the international aviation industry net zero is by SAFs. Electric short haul—possible in the next 20 to 30 years. Hydrogen—forget it; it is never going to work and any pilot will tell you, “Not a chance.” That is just so we have that laid out there.
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15:42 Greg Smith (Conservative)
Adding £1 or £2 to the price of a flight does not concern the airlines from the passenger point of view—it will not put passengers off. What will put them off is when the airlines suddenly realise that if you multiply that by 550, which is the number of people in an A380, you suddenly start to bankroll quite a lot of extra money that has to be found. I am hedging my bets, so I will not tell you that it will be higher or lower than £1.50. That is a very small amount per individual, but for the companies that are trying to make aviation work and are positive about trying to move to net zero, this is the perfect time to push, as they have suddenly woken up to the fact that they are laggards.
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16:05 Chris Vince (Labour)
Mike Kane: First, I thank you, Chris—you have been a great advocate for aviation since you came to Westminster in 2024, with Stansted airport near your constituency. The No. 1 risk is not doing this—that is the risk. I think Matt from Heathrow and Rob from Airlines UK said that in our approach to getting to net zero by 2050, we have a number of Government policies—airspace modernisation, leadership at CORSIA, the emissions trading scheme, the £2.3 billion investment in the Aerospace Technology Institute and hydrogen regulatory development—but that 40% of that pathway is the Bill. If we do not pass it, we are in serious trouble about decarbonising the industry. That is the key risk.
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16:07 Tom Collins (Labour)
I will make no party political points, but four or five years ago we were promised that by 2025 five plants would be up and running. If I were going there, I would not be starting from here, but we are getting on with doing this now. I think everyone on this Committee can be extraordinarily proud that this will be the moment that we stepped up and began to decarbonise the aviation industry.
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Amanda Hack (Labour)
We have industrial heartlands dotted right across our nation, including in our coastal communities. They are almost oven-ready to host the technology, inward development and jobs. Our analysis, which was a minimum compared with those of everybody else in the room, is that this would create 15,000 jobs in the next few years and £5 billion in GVA. Those jobs are in many of our run-down coastal communities and industrial heartlands, so this is a win-win on many levels—in terms of decarbonisation, carbon capture, production and the regeneration of parts of our nation that have been left behind for far too long.
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16:30 Paul Kohler (Liberal Democrat)
Mike Kane: I think clause 6 gives us flexibility. That is what is key in letting the contract. We have made some principle statements here. This is industry-funded; we do not think the taxpayer should pay for the decarbonisation of aviation. We know that at the moment it is a small amount of what transport emits nationally, but because it is one of the harder-to-decarbonise areas, we know that the graph will go up over time. That is why we are funding the fuel suppliers, at the top of the chain here, so that the costs are spread as this goes lower down the chain and eventually to the passenger.
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16:33 Graeme Downie (Labour)
Q This question has come up in some of the other discussions today, but do you think there is enough in the Bill to properly incentivise the move beyond first and second generation SAFs, into what I think some of the witnesses described as the ultimate place we want to end up in—and where there is probably the most opportunity for UK IP, UK innovation and subsequently UK jobs and growth—such that the UK is where SAF happens and is created, as well as where it is developed in future? Do you think there is enough in the Bill for that? How do you see the Bill, and the next steps after that, as making sure that we can really achieve that and ensure that proper added value for the economy, while meeting climate targets?
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Lewis Atkinson (Labour)
Mike Kane: First, you have been a big supporter of sustainable aviation fuel in your constituency, because you have the Wastefront tyre-to-fuel plant, so your constituency is already benefitting from jobs that have been created by that company. The Bill also allows us to scale up the technologies that we want to use, which could be of particular benefit to the north-east. I am also the maritime Minister, and we have announced £1 billion investment at the Port of Tyne for LS Cables, and Teesport is about to announce big investments in sustainability as part of our clean energy mission. The mayor, Kim McGuinness, is absolutely tied into this agenda, and using the whole north-east coast to support our green energy mission is vital.
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