Fulcrum BioEnergy’s waste-to-fuels project in England awarded $20 million grant from UK government

Fulcrum BioEnergy Inc. announced Feb. 16 that its U.K. subsidiary, Fulcrum BioEnergy Ltd., has received a grant of approximately £16.8 million (USD $20.2 million) from the U.K. Department for Transport Advanced Fuels Fund.

The grant, which runs through to 2025, will support development of Fulcrum NorthPoint, a residual waste to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) facility that will be located at the Essar Stanlow Manufacturing Complex in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire in North West England.

The grant will be used to fund engineering activities for the plant, which is expected to have the capacity to transform about 600,000 metric tons of residual waste into approximately 26.4 million gallons of low-carbon SAF per year when it enters operations in 2027.

“We are very pleased to have been selected and awarded this grant from the U.K. Department for Transport Advanced Fuels Fund,” said Eric Pryor, Fulcrum’s president and CEO. “Fulcrum applauds the U.K. government and the Department for Transport for taking another step toward significantly reducing net-carbon emissions for hard-to-abate sectors, including aviation, through the support of low-carbon SAF projects, including our Fulcrum NorthPoint facility. This funding furthers our engineering efforts for the plant and well positions Fulcrum for additional project financing for the facility. We look forward to bringing our patented process, technical expertise, IP and experience from the successful commissioning and initial operations of our first commercial-scale plant to the U.K. to make Fulcrum NorthPoint a success.”

Fulcrum recently announced the successful production of low-carbon synthetic crude oil from landfill waste at its Sierra BioFuels Plant, the world’s first commercial-scale waste-to-fuels plant, located outside of Reno, Nevada, in the U.S.

The company has developed an innovative process for transforming a true waste product into a valuable low-carbon transportation fuel for the aviation industry.

Fulcrum expects to utilize a standardized, scalable, low-cost approach for larger future projects, including Fulcrum NorthPoint, replicating the successful process at Sierra, which is backed by patents and capitalizes on the intellectual property developed by the company in its engineering and start-up operations of this first-of-its-kind plant.

The Pleasanton, California-based company says it is advancing on its large commercial-growth program of net-zero carbon waste-to-fuels plants across North America and in select international markets with a planned production capacity of approximately 400 million gallons per year.