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Heathrow launches fourth year of £86m SAF fund

Heathrow airport has made £86 million available to airlines to support the transition to Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).  

This round of the airport’s SAF incentive scheme – which is in its fourth year – will run for all of 2025. 

The fund goes towards reaching Heathrow’s target for all aviation fuel used at the airport to be 3% SAF in 2025. This would amount to 187,000 tonnes of fuel.  

The target sits at 1% above the government’s SAF mandate of 2% of fuel used on all departing flights from the UK being comprised of SAF. The mandate came into effect on 1 January this year.  

Director of carbon strategy, Matt Gorman said: “Sustainable Aviation Fuel is no longer a future promise—it’s a proven solution that is powering flights worldwide. Our SAF incentive scheme, part of our Connecting People and Planet sustainability strategy, has made significant progress and we’re now exploring options to set a long-term incentive signal to 2030.  

“We are delighted that government has moved so quickly to legislate the SAF Mandate. We must now accelerate legislation for the SAF Revenue Certainty Mechanism to ensure we can build a domestic industry that will help decarbonise and drive economic growth.”  

SAF is an alternative to fossil-derived fuels and is usually made of waste feedstocks such as used cooking oil.  

The Heathrow scheme aims to encourages airlines to switch to SAF by approximately halving the price gap between kerosene and its cleaner alternative, which the airport hopes will make SAF more commercially viable for airlines. 

If the scheme reaches its target, it would have reduced lifecycle carbon emissions from flights by over 500,000 tonnes. Heathrow said that this would be the equivalent of over 800,000 economy class passengers round trips from Heathrow to JFK Airport in New York.  

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