London Heathrow airport is making ?86 million available in incentives to airlines to encourage them to start using more alternative aviation fuels.

The UK hub said that this funding was part of its plan to accelerate the adoption of ¡°sustainable¡± aviation fuel (SAF) this year. Heathrow is targeting 3 per cent SAF usage as part of its total fuel mix in 2025.

This target is one percentage point higher than the 2 per cent SAF mandate introduced for the country¡¯s aviation industry by the UK government at the start of this year.

Heathrow said in a statement that achieving this goal would cut carbon emissions from flights in 2025 by more than 500,000 metric tonnes over the lifecycle of the fuel. The airport¡¯s future targets include reaching SAF usage of at least 11 per cent by 2030.

Matt Gorman, Heathrow¡¯s director of carbon strategy, said: ¡°Our SAF incentive scheme, part of our Connecting People and Planet sustainability strategy, has made significant progress and we're now exploring options to set a long-term incentive signal to 2030.

¡°We are delighted that government has moved so quickly to legislate the SAF Mandate. We must now accelerate legislation for the SAF Revenue Certainty Mechanism to ensure we can build a domestic industry that will help decarbonise and drive economic growth.¡±?

The airport has also published its Nature Positive Plan, which aims to ¡°better understand, and where possible, reduce Heathrow¡¯s impacts on nature¡±.

This includes commitments such as expanding nature networks around the airport to support ecological resilience, improving biodiversity management and supporting nature-based carbon removal.