Nuclear innovation meets aviation: CNF's bold plan for sustainable aviation
Interview with Carbon Neutral Fuels (CNF) Co-Founder Alasdair Lumsden
Summary
UK startup Carbon Neutral Fuels (CNF) wants to replace liquid fossil fuels with a more sustainable alternative.
To do this, CNF is designing a modular and scalable Power-to-Liquid (PtL) e-fuel facility that it intends to license regional sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) producers globally.
CNF’s first step is to build and operate a 25 kt/y commercial-scale plant in the UK, utilising a mix of Direct Air Capture (DAC) + Biogenic CO2 as feedstock.
Given the enormous electricity requirement to produce PtL fuels, CNF is looking to nuclear energy as an energy source.
To fund its first commercial plant, CNF intends to use a mixture of VC and bank financing, with airline offtake agreements as a key to securing finance.
CNF was co-founded by Alasdair Lumsden and Sophie Zienkiewicz on the sidelines of COP26 in Glasgow in 2021. In an interview with Sustainability in the Air, co-founder Lumsden reveals the colossal amount of renewable energy needed to decarbonise aviation through e-fuels, also known as Power-to-Liquid or PtL fuels.
Note: PtL is a synthetically produced liquid hydrocarbon that uses renewable electricity as its primary energy source and water and carbon dioxide (CO2) as its main resources. Learn more about the different SAF pathways in our latest report.
According to Lumsden, the UK alone would need 60 gigawatts of electricity to produce 15 billion litres of aviation fuel.
Given that the UK’s current capacity is about 45 gigawatts, this would mean creating the equivalent of 1.5 new electricity grids just for aviation.
Other industry analysts have echoed Lumsden’s analysis. For example, a report by the World Fund on 'Electrofuels for Aviation' projected that replacing a mere 8% of European aviation fuel with e-fuel by 2040 would require the total electricity capacity of countries like Sweden or the Netherlands.
Advancing SAF with nuclear energy and carbon capture innovations
In confronting this energy source dilemma for e-fuel production, Lumsden champions nuclear power as a possible solution.
Though Lumsden admits that nuclear has a reputational problem thanks to incidents like Fukushima, he pointed out that the reactor was built in the 1960s, with Chernobyl’s built even earlier.
Drawing parallels with automotive safety advancements, he explains,
"If you have a car that was built in the 60s, it doesn't have any of the safety features that you would find in a car of today.”
As a result, he believes that a new generation of nuclear reactors, like Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs), could be used to generate fossil-fuel-free hydrogen. This pink hydrogen – as compared to green hydrogen made from sources like solar or wind – would then be used as one of the ingredients to make e-fuels.
No longer a fringe idea, nuclear energy has received support from none other than Emirates CEO Sir Tim Clark, who, like Lumsden, believes that we need to consider it as the key to unlocking aviation decarbonisation.
Along with hydrogen, another key ingredient in making e-fuels is captured CO2. As he considers this problematic, Lumsden said CNF is looking to avoid CO2 captured from industrial sources.
"If you use an industrial point source of CO2, you are enabling a polluter to kind of greenwash because that CO2 that was underground goes through that factory, gets recycled by a PtL process, but it still ultimately ends up in the sky.”
Instead, CNF aims to utilise CO2 from a blend of Direct Air Capture (DAC) and biogenic sources, while acknowledging the economic and technological hurdles in relying solely on DAC.
Looking toward future carbon capture methodologies, Lumsden also highlighted the potential of oceanic CO2 extraction, given its higher concentration than atmospheric levels.
Despite the early-stage nature of such technologies, he noted that:
"Direct air capture isn't the only carbon capture game in town. If you extract CO2 from the oceans, it's about 150 times more concentrated by volume than in the air.”
Several projects are, in fact, looking at oceanic CO2 extraction – for example, the SeaCURE programme being run through the University of Exeter.
Why Lumsden is optimistic about the future
Lumsden says he is optimistic about aviation’s ability to reach net zero. In particular, he believes that the targets the industry has set and the mandates put in place by regulators have helped concentrate minds:
“Targets will likely get missed, but they're still extremely useful in focusing people's attention and are spurring action. These things often start off slow, and it can feel like nothing is happening, but suddenly you get exponential growth.”
Lumsden points to the renewable energy boom of the past five years as a model of what could happen in aviation.
Further, addressing the company’s overall plans, Lumsden said that CNF has decided to forgo the development of a demonstration-scale plant, opting instead for direct progression to commercial-scale production. This approach aims to overcome economic barriers and fulfil airline demand more efficiently.
“Initially, we were going to do a 1kt demo scaling to 12kt commercial, but we've decided to skip that and go straight to a 25kt commercial-scale facility. The economics of a small facility just don't work. By going larger, we'll have cheaper fuel, enabling us to secure offtakes and enabling bankability. We're in early-stage discussions with a potential site with the CO2 and grid connection we need.”
Of course, creating commercial SAF plants is extremely capital intensive, with a cost of $500+ million mentioned at the recently concluded SAF Investor Conference in London.
Lumsden said this figure is realistic, but CNF didn’t intend to rely on VC funding alone. Instead, it would adopt a dual approach: combining venture capital for operational costs with project finance for constructing the production facility. This strategy will be bolstered by securing off-take agreements with airlines to ensure revenue stability and attract investment.
Following the construction of its first commercial plant by the end of this decade, Lumsden explained that he sees CNF licensing its technology to other fuel producers worldwide for use in their SAF facilities.
Our take
Currently, the resources required to produce sufficient quantities of e-fuels don’t exist in countries like the UK. Rather than gloss over these issues, CNF is adopting a forward-looking approach, where nuclear energy could be used to produce e-fuels, with CO2 being taken from biogenic sources and DAC, and eventually new methods such as ocean carbon capture.
Meanwhile, going directly to a commercial-scale facility recognises that the upcoming SAF mandates in areas like the European Union will compel airlines to seek SAF supplies sooner rather than later.