© Supplied by Lighthouse Green Fue 
The firm behind Europe’s biggest sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant, which is set to be based in Teesside, has said that permitting is slowing progress.
The Lighthouse Green Fuels project in Stockton-on-Tees aims to produce 175 million litres of SAF per year when it kicks off commercial operations in 2028.
This marks “around 11% of the government target” for SAF, the project’s boss explained at a recent event.
Construction firm Alfanar Projects has estimated the £1.5 billion refinery will create 2,000 jobs for the build and around 300 operational jobs once production kicks off.
Simon Owens, director of engineering and technical at the Saudi Arabia-based firm, told attendees at the Energy Exports Conference (EEC) in Aberdeen that the biggest issue impacting the project is policy.
Owens said: “We find the biggest challenges to get over the line are in financing the project and probably permitting as well.”
On financing, recent UK government moves have proved to be a “big win” for Lighthouse Green Fuels, however, permitting has still left the project in doldrums, the man behind the project told an Aberdeen audience.
He said that SAF needed a contracts for difference (CfD) style mechanism to ensure price stability, something that was recently delivered in the form of the revenue certainty mechanism.
“This essentially brings price stability to SAF so that we can then get the commercial debt into the project,” the Alfanar director of engineering and technical explained.
He added that “this is one of the biggest successes we’ve had.”
However, now that financial stability is on the horizon, the red tape around Lighthouse Green Fuels is the project’s main gripe.
“Our project is big, it’s a new refinery project so we have to go through what’s called a development consent order route to obtain our planning,” delegates at EEC heard.
Owens said that this “is a very slow” and “expensive process”, however, the government is “also trying to reform and speed up” such applications, something he argued is “much needed”.
“We have two bottlenecks, the CfD coming in and also the permitting, if we had those earlier, we could move to execute the project sooner,” the project boss concluded.
