Britain is building its first commercial sustainable aviation fuel plant — targeting production that would fuel every domestic UK flight.
The United Kingdom is home to some of the world's largest and most sophisticated aviation operations — Heathrow handles more international passengers than any other airport, and the UK has the third largest aviation sector in the world by passenger numbers. Decarbonizing British aviation requires a domestic SAF industry of significant scale.
Alfanar — a Saudi-British industrial conglomerate — is building the Lighthouse Green Fuels plant at Teesside in northeast England. The facility will convert over 175,000 tonnes of non-recyclable household waste annually into 60 million liters of sustainable aviation fuel through gasification and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Construction is underway with first production targeted for 2025.
The Teesside location is strategic — adjacent to the Humber region's existing petrochemical and refining infrastructure, close to major freight airports at Doncaster Sheffield and East Midlands, and within the East Coast industrial cluster that is developing carbon capture infrastructure. Captured CO₂ from the Lighthouse plant could be stored in North Sea geological formations — making the waste-to-SAF process genuinely carbon negative over its full lifecycle.
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have signed off-take agreements with Lighthouse Green Fuels — providing the revenue certainty that made the investment decision possible.
The UK Sustainable Aviation Fuel mandate — requiring 10% SAF from 2030 and 22% by 2040 — creates a guaranteed growing market that justifies the multi-billion-pound plant investment.
UK Department for Transport — 2024
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