Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, with the help of Velocys (LON:VLS), is looking at ways to drum up energy out of a load of rubbish.
The Russian oligarch and football club owner is a 21% shareholder in AIM-quoted Velocys, which has now begun an engineering study for the development of a new waste-to-liquids project in the United Kingdom.
It is proposed that the new project would take hundreds of thousands of tonnes of ‘post-recycled’ waste, which would otherwise go to landfill or incineration, and convert it into clean-burning, sustainable jet fuel and diesel.
Velocys will be working with another company affiliated with Abramovich’s Ervington Investments vehicle.
David Pummell, Velocys's chief executive, said: “Velocys and Ervington have a mutual strategic interest in delivering a commercial scale WTL solution and see this UK opportunity as meeting our joint criteria for success."
Pummell highlighted that in the UK there are certain economic advantages for the proposed project, including gate fees and fuel credits.
“We have strong customer interest, because this would be one of the few commercial options for making sustainable jet fuel,” he added.