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Ministers moved to rethink a ban on biofuels for aeroplanes weeks after UK civil servants responsible for the policy were taken on a lobbying tour of America’s Corn Belt, according to documents obtained under freedom of information rules.
The revelation raises concerns that US commercial pressure could weaken Britain’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions while boosting US farmers at the expense of UK fuel producers.
The UK decided in 2024 to exclude biofuels — fuels made from crops — from its quotas for sustainable aviation fuel because of concerns over how much land they require and how they displace food production.
However, in December 2025, the government reopened the issue, launching a call for evidence on whether crop-derived fuels should be allowed to qualify under the scheme.
Documents seen by the FT show that UK civil servants had travelled to the US to visit major biofuel producers in late October 2025.
The trip included corn and soyabean country in Illinois and Iowa, where the officials visited ethanol plants and grain processors in Nebraska, with stops at ethanol producers POET, KAAPA and Elite Octane, as well as two of the world’s biggest agricultural trading houses, Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill.
The companies did not respond to requests for comment.
Critics say changing the UK rules would undermine a policy originally designed to support waste-based fuels, such as used cooking oil, and synthetic e-fuels.
If the UK were to include crop-grown fuels in its sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) quotas, US producers would likely be among the major beneficiaries.
“Allowing crop-based fuels into the SAF mandate would open the floodgates to cheap and dirty US imports that will undercut UK advanced fuels and e-fuels,” said Anna Krajinska, UK director for Transport & Environment, a campaign group.
Having just committed £219mn to building “a domestic advanced fuels industry, it makes little sense to pursue a policy that will undermine it,” she added.
The UK delegation to the US included officials from the Department of Transport and Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), who were working on the SAF mandate and low-carbon fuels policy, alongside representatives of the British embassy in Washington and lobby group Airlines UK.
Briefing materials presented corn, soyabeans and ethanol as potential building blocks for aviation fuel. Participants were asked to consider what a “moonshot” SAF partnership between Illinois and the UK might look like.
US farmers and ethanol producers are looking to expand the market for biofuels, which are widely used in road transport, as trade tensions and rising input costs squeeze farm incomes. The industry increasingly sees aviation as the next big prize, with SAF offering a potential new source of demand for corn and other crops.
Audrey Denvir, an associate at the think-tank World Resources Institute, said crop-based biofuels were “not effective at reducing emissions” once the wider effects on land use were taken into account.
“When you take food out of the global food market, you have to replace it elsewhere,” she said.
Denvir said allowing crop-based fuels into aviation would risk “decades of increased land-use change” and would be “a huge step backwards” for efforts to decarbonise one of the hardest sectors to clean up.
Supporters of widening the mandate argue that feedstock restrictions risk slowing the growth of a market that remains nascent and expensive. Jason Cheng, chief executive of Kerogen Capital, a private equity fund manager that invests in SAF producers, said a broader range of feedstocks would allow the industry to scale more quickly before stronger sustainability criteria are introduced.
The Department for Transport said the call for evidence was “not a commitment to using crop-based feedstocks”, and that all fuels had to meet “strict sustainability criteria to be eligible under the SAF Mandate”. Defra declined to comment.
