Professor Hutchings said such a policy would be "a travesty" and should be considered a "non-starter", as it would require a change of use in a huge proportion of land in order to meet future SAF need.ivNZET Committee, Official Report, 30 September 2025, col. 23
The downside of PTL is that it requires significant investment in infrastructure, in order to source green hydrogen and carbon at scale.vNZET Committee, Official Report, 30 September 2025, cols. 3-4, 26; 28 October 2025, col. 35 The Committee is well aware, from other scrutiny work in this Parliamentary session that - alongside the challenge of securing investment - developments of this sort can be locally controversial and must negotiate the planning system.viSee our 2023 report into Scotland's future electricity infrastructure needs There must also be commensurate electricity grid expansion- and similar considerations apply there.viiNZET Committee, Official Report, 30 September 2025, col. 33 Witnesses also noted that even if and when significant scale-up is achieved, SAF producers will not be the only up-takers for green hydrogen.viiiNZET Committee, Official Report, 30 September 2025, col. 4 The high cost of electricity in the UK was also mentioned as a hurdle to expansion for PTLixNZET Committee, Official Report, 30 September 2025, col. 25; 28 October 2025, col. 27 This was also a key theme of the Committee's one-off evidence session on green hydrogen prospects at the Grangemouth site earlier in 2025 - we heard that the cost of electricity would make up around three quarters of the cost of green hydrogen.xNZET Committee, Official Report, 13 May 2025, col. 3 Electricity cost concerns could, however, clearly be mitigated if wind power, especially offshore wind power, expands at the rate hoped for by government and if hydrogen can be harvested and used on-site.xiNZET Committee, Official Report, 28 October 2025, cols. 11-12, 13-15
There was disagreement between witnesses as to whether PTL SAF was likely to become more affordable in the near future.