The Allplane Podcast #125: sewage to SAF w/Yvonne Moynihan (Wizz Air) & James Hygate (Firefly)

Wizz Air takes pride in having the lowest carbon footprint per passenger and kilometer in the airline industry, 52g, number that it expects to bring further down as it renews the fleet with larger, denser and more efficient aircraft.

But fleet renewal alone won’t do the trick. In fact, “fleet” is just one of the three “Fs” that the pan-European ultra-low-cost airline relies on to get to Net Zero by 2050, even in a context of growing air traffic.

“Footprint”, that is, efficiency improvements in the way aircraft are operates, is another, relatively minor “F” in this vision. But the bulk of the carbon reduction will rest upon the massive use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

Since production of SAF is currently small, Wizz Air has decided to take a proactive stance and become a direct investor in a number of innovative SAF projects, one of the most promising of which is Firefly, a British startup that turns sewage into SAF.

In this episode of the podcast, Yvonne Moynihan, head of ESG and sustainability at Wizz Air, and James Hygate OBE, founder and CEO of Firefly, share the (virtual) stage to explain this project in detail.

We will talk about how Firefly technology works, how scalable it is and how does this project fit into Wizz Air’s SAF-sourcing ans well as in the airline’s broader decarbonization plans.

Tune in for a fascinating chat about one of the most interesting SAF projects right now in Europe and how it will help Wizz Air strengthen its sustainability credentials even further…