Firefly Reveals Plans for World’s First Sewage-to-SAF Facility in Essex, UK; Offtake Partner Wizz Air Announces Target of 10% SAF Usage by 2030

(Essex, United Kingdom) Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) producer Firefly Green Fuels announced plans today (April 11) to build a pilot sewage-to-SAF facility in Essex, U.K., in conjunction with its offtake partner Wizz Air (WIZZ-GB: LSE) formalizing a target of 10% SAF usage by 2030, during a joint press conference held by the two companies, according to SAF Investor.

Photo of a Wizz Air Airbus A320neo jet on the tarmac, courtesy of Wizz Air.

Firefly’s planned pilot sewage-to-SAF facility will be built at Haltermann Carless refinery site in Harwich, Essex; the company said that it anticipates constructing the facility by 2027 followed by a planned first-of-its-kind commercial-scale plant by 2029, according to SAF Investor.

“The signing of these agreements marks a significant leap forward in realising our ambitions to develop a sustainable SAF industry here in the UK,” said Firefly CEO James Hygate while speaking to SAF Investor.

Low-cost European airline Wizz Air, which signed a 15-year SAF off take agreement with Firefly in 2023 - a deal worth approximately $1 billion - simultaneously announced at the press conference with Firefly today that it is targeting a usage of at least 10% SAF on all of its flights by 2030, to help reduce overall carbon emissions per passenger/kilometer by 25%. Wizz Air’s offtake agreement with Firefly specifies the supply of up to 525,000 tonnes of SAF to the airline’s U.K. operations from 2028 onward, according to SAF Investor.

“Alongside fleet renewal and operational efficiency, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plays a crucial role in reducing carbon emissions from aviation,”  said Yvonne Moynihan, Wizz Air’s Corporate and ESG Officer. “Our investment in Firefly, which has the potential to reduce our lifecycle emissions by 100,000 tonnes CO2-eq per year, underscores our commitment to mainstream the use of SAF in our operations by 2030.”

In 2023, Wizz Air achieved its record low annual average CO2 intensity result at 51.5 grams per passenger/km, a 6.8% reduction from 2022, according to SAF Investor.

Photo of a Firefly Green Fuels plant courtesy of SAF Investor.

Per SAF Investor, in an additional step toward expediting commercialization of its future SAF plant, Firefly Green Fuels also announced that it has signed multiple agreements with Haltermann Carless, Petrofac, Chevron Lummus Global (CLG) and Anglian Water to address its feedstock to fractional distillation requirements at the forthcoming plant. As part of its partnership with CLG, CLG will provide refinery infrastructure, designed to optimize efficiency and flexibility while minimizing emissions for Firefly’s commercial-scale plant.

To ensure adequate feedstock availability, Firefly has also entered in an agreement with Anglian Water to secure waste feedstock (sewage sludge) for the planned pilot facility, according to SAF Investor.