The hon. Lady makes a very good point, and I am grateful to her for it. I have a great deal of sympathy with people who ask for the membership of the Jet Zero Council. We have to have a finite number of people on the council, simply because it is a technical body and has to be able to produce results, but trade unions are involved in the sub-groups, which I will spend a moment talking about, particularly to put right some of the misunderstandings.
In June, we had the successful third meeting of the Jet Zero Council. The hon. Member for Putney said that she was disappointed that it had not met. I know what she means, but I ask her to remember that it is a plenary body. Perhaps there has been a misunderstanding; I hope I can put it right. At that stage, the Transport Secretary announced plans to formalise and broaden the zero emission flight delivery group, and to establish new sub-groups on ground infrastructure, regulation and commercialisation. I will come to the sub-groups in a moment.
Emma Gilthorpe, the Jet Zero Council chief executive officer, has established new governance arrangements and is really driving them forward. There are two key workstreams at present: sustainable aviation fuels and zero emissions flight. She has also been holding the momentum in between the council meetings because, as we all know, often the work takes place in between, rather than at, meetings, at which people report. If I can put right the misunderstanding that the hon. Member for Putney perhaps fell into inadvertently, the most recent meeting was the 29th meeting across the council’s delivery groups, sub-groups, steering group and plenary council. I hope that that helps and reassures the House about some of the things that we are doing.
I want to spend a few moments talking about sustainable aviation fuels, because they are so important. This is where I will come to the points made by the hon. Member for Bath. It is possible to drop fuels into existing aircraft types, and the synthetic fuels that she mentioned are a form of sustainable aviation fuel. That is part of the mix that is being considered. As I will explain in a moment, the Government are essentially providing the initial money to develop all of those things. I will give her another good example in a moment. This is the sort of thing that we often read about in the papers—turning waste into jet fuel, for example, which is one good example of what can be done with waste, although I accept that perhaps there will be a need for more than that.
The Prime Minister’s 10-point plan announced a package of exciting measures that are designed to introduce the production and use of sustainable aviation fuel. The £15 million “Green Fuels, Green Skies” competition aims to support innovative SAF production technologies at commercial scale, so that they can be produced in the UK and then reduce emissions in the UK. Eight projects have recently been shortlisted for funding. If hon. Members would care to look at the website—I think that the hon. Member for Bath will be particularly interested—they
will see that the first project listed, which was in July, combines carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere with water. It is direct air carbon capture and storage, which I think is what she was asking me about. That is one of the shortlisted projects. Essentially, the answer to her question, “Are synthetic fuels being considered as part of SAF?”, is that they are certainly part of the technological mix, and what we are doing is putting in the money to see them developed. I hope that answer assists her.
The £3 million for a SAF clearing house to build and further develop UK testing and certification expertise is a big part of this process as well. We have also finished consulting on proposals for a sustainable aviation fuels mandate to drive the development and uptake of SAF, which also provides greater support for the development of synthetic fuels, which the hon. Member talked about, as we look to maximise their development.
The consultation sets out a variety of potential SAF uptake scenarios, going up to 10% SAF by 2030 and 75% by 2050, but I am really keen to emphasise the point that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North made, which is that this is not fantasy stuff—it is happening right now, as we heard from him when he talked about the recent British Airways flight to his constituency.
I will try my best to respond to everyone’s points, Sir Gary; I am conscious that I may run out of time, as I want to leave some time for the hon. Member for Putney to respond to the debate.