UK launches £219 million fund to boost sustainable aviation fuel production
Britain put £219 million behind SAF and other low-carbon fuels, with £93 million available now and bids opening in mid-July.
The UK government on June 16 launched a £219 million low carbon fuels fund to push domestic SAF projects toward commercial production, with £93 million available immediately and applications set to open in mid-July. Aviation, Maritime and Decarbonisation Minister Keir Mather said the fund was “the next chapter in Britain’s green aviation revolution” as ministers tied the package to jobs, innovation and a domestic supply chain.
The new pot builds on £198 million already committed through the Advanced Fuels Fund since 2022, including a July 2025 round that split £63 million among 17 UK companies and was said to support about 1,400 jobs. Government said the latest fund could support 15,000 jobs and add as much as £5 billion to the economy by 2050, which puts a hard ceiling on the size of the first wave of public support even as the UK tries to position itself as a SAF production hub.
The grant money is only one side of the policy stack. The SAF Mandate, which came into force on January 1, 2025, starts at 2% of total UK jet fuel demand this year, rises to 10% in 2030 and 22% in 2040, while the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Act 2026, which received Royal Assent on March 5, created the legal basis for revenue certainty contracts. Government guidance says the first tranche of those contracts is expected to back UK projects using non-HEFA technologies and feedstocks, the part of the market that still carries the highest development risk.
Against rival incentives, the UK’s £219 million looks targeted rather than transformational. The U.S. clean fuel production credit gives SAF $0.35 a gallon from January 1, 2025, and the European Commission says the transport investment plan will require more than €100 billion by 2035, including €57 billion to €67 billion for SAF, with EU instruments expected to mobilise at least €2.9 billion by 2027. That scale gap suggests the British package is best read as a signal to private capital and a bridge to first-of-a-kind plants, not the full financing stack that will be needed to build a durable domestic SAF industry.
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