Sustainable fuel tech Velocys broadens customer base and furthers commitment from BA

Velocys plc, the Oxford-based sustainable fuels technology company, has entered into a contract with a European renewable fuels developer to provide initial engineering services to a project, which is in the planning stages.

Whilst the revenues for this initial stage of the project are minimal the agreement broadens the company's customer base and demonstrates the ability to progress its pipeline of potential global customers towards commercial contracts. 

Velocys has also agreed with British Airways to extend both the UK Altalto project Joint Development Agreement and the Option Agreement for BA to acquire 50 per cent of Altalto Ltd by one year to 31 March 2023. The original option was signed on 12 May 2020 and initially extended on 30 March 2021.

Altalto, a collaboration between two British Airways and Velocys, is developing plans to turn household and commercial waste into clean-burning fuels with reduced greenhouse gas emissions for air and road transport.

Velocys offers its customers a technology solution enabling commercial scale production of sustainable synthetic fuels from a variety of waste materials, such as municipal, commercial and forestry residue. Sustainable aviation fuel, SAF, is the only commercially available alternative to fossil aviation fuels.

The basic concept of converting solids into liquid fuels using this route has been in industrial use for decades. Velocys has modified the process to make it suitable for the production of jet fuel and other transport fuel from waste. Its proposed plant will take hundreds of thousands of tonnes per year of household and office waste (including hard-to-recycle plastics), left over after recycling, and convert them into cleaner burning, sustainable fuels for aviation and road use. Otherwise this waste would end up in landfill, or be incinerated.

The plant’s main product will be Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene (SPK), which is approved worldwide for commercial aviation at up to 50 per cent in a blend with conventional jet fuel. The other product is naphtha, a constituent of petrol, which will help to reduce the net CO₂ emissions of road users.

The importance of sustainable synthetic fuels from bio-based feedstocks was also recently highlighted by President Biden, as part of the US aviation decarbonisation agenda.

The company's customer pipeline is growing with increased demand for the Velocys technology to ramp up the commercial scale production of sustainable synthetic fuels to accelerate the global clean energy transition, and to strengthen host country fuel independence.