Ricardo takes lead role in DfT’s £15m Green Fuels, Green Skies contest

Ricardo, a world-class environmental engineering and strategic consultancy, is jointly managing the Department for Transport’s £15 million competition for Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) projects.

The Green Fuels, Green Skies contest, announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as part of his Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution in November last year, was launched on 16 March 2021.

Its aim is to support the development of the emerging UK sector on its pathway to production of SAF at scale.

It will provide up to £15 million in grant funding to UK SAF projects during the 2021/22 financial year. It will look to support the early-stage development of UK SAF plants, referred to as Front End Engineering Design (FEED), Pre-FEED, and Feasibility Study stages of a project’s development life cycle.

The competition, jointly managed and administered by Ricardo and E4tech, will focus on supporting activities related to the development of First-Of-A-Kind (FOAK) commercial SAF plants in the UK, but will also be open to demonstration scale SAF projects and will allocate up to £2m in funding for projects at the feasibility stage of development across these scales.

Fiona Twisse, Ricardo Senior Technical Consultant, said: “This is not the first time Ricardo has worked with the Department for Transport to support and manage the funds for a high-profile national competition.

“The UK has challenging goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in transport and we are looking forward to discovering the projects that will help find sustainable alternatives to traditional aviation fuels.”

It is understood that by 2030, the development of a domestic SAF industry could be worth over £400m a year to the UK economy. Up to 9,800 highly skilled jobs could be created in the UK, potentially in regions closely aligned with the Government’s levelling up agenda. It would also reduce our reliance on imported fuels by boosting UK fuel security.

Application documents will be available from Wednesday, March 24 on the competition website at https://ee.ricardo.com/GFGS. Any queries about the GFGS competition should be sent to GFGS@ricardo.com – all questions and responses will be shared on the competition website within an FAQs document.

The deadline for competition submissions is Monday, 31 May at 16:00hrs and applications should be submitted electronically to GFGS@ricardo.com.