FOUNDERS UNFILTERED: Q&A WITH JAMES HYGATE OBE, CEO & FOUNDER OF FIREFLY
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OUR GOAL IS TO DECARBONISE AVIATION
This month James Hygate, CEO & Founder of Firefly, is in the hot seat. Firefly is developing a solution turning treated sewage waste, known as biosolids, into sustainable aviation fuel that can reduce jet emissions.
The company is building a commercial processing facility in Essex, with three of the UK’s water giants already committed to providing sewage as feedstock.
Firefly turns home-grown waste material into biocrude, which is then refined into sustainable aviation fuel. Firefly’s process removes the need for fossil fuels and can reduce lifecycle CO2 emissions by around 90%, while supporting UK energy security and helping protect flight costs from global fuel shocks.
Q: WHAT ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT WITH YOUR BUSINESS RIGHT NOW?
We’re most excited about moving from vision to delivery: building our first commercial-scale Sewage to SAF facility and proving that our ‘Wet-to-Jet' platform is a repeatable model that we can roll out everywhere. We’ve engaged the best-in-class partners who are well versed in this breakthrough waste-to-energy ecosystem.
We’ve strengthened the team with people who know how to execute, and we’re now turning that platform into real projects that can scale globally and start saving carbon immediately.
Q: WHAT IS YOUR ULTIMATE GOAL / MISSION?
Our purpose is to combat climate change by decarbonising aviation, and our vision is to deliver meaningful, measurable impact at gigatonne scale. To achieve this, we plan to establish and lead the Sewage Biosolids to Jet category, then expand globally across other wet biomass feedstocks using the same ‘Wet to Jet’ platform - building a repeatable infrastructure model that produces affordable SAF at scale.
Q: WHICH PURPOSE-LED COMPANY (OTHER THAN YOUR OWN) DO YOU MOST ADMIRE, AND WHY?
I most admire Unreasonable Group for building purpose into the way the organisation operates, not just what it supports. Their community is grounded in shared values. They lead relationship-first, with a “We > I” mindset that brings founders, corporates, policymakers and capital into the same outcome. Their long-term orientation and belief in entrepreneurship as systems change sets a high bar for purpose-led leadership - especially in hard-to-decarbonise sectors like aviation.
Q: WHAT’S ONE PODCAST YOU THINK EVERYONE SHOULD listen to?
For sustainable aviation, I like resources that stay grounded in what it will take to scale supply. ‘Sustainability in the Air’ is a strong podcast for that. More broadly, the book ‘Play Bigger’ is a useful reminder that the most valuable companies don’t just compete in markets - they define categories, then build the systems to lead them.
Q: WHAT’S THE ONE PIECE OF ADVICE YOU WISH YOU COULD TELL ALL ENTREPRENEURS?
Maintain unwavering dedication to the key elements that signal inevitability within the business: your team, execution, and credibility with partners. Choose progress over perfection. Be a company stakeholders choose to work with for vision and values, not one they engage with purely out of transactional obligation, and always move at speed with intent, accepting weighted risk where it accelerates progress.
Q: WHAT’S THE BIGGEST RISK YOU’VE TAKEN?
Deciding to create an entirely new infrastructure category from the outset - rather than focusing on just one project - was our greatest risk. This choice required investing time, reputation, and resources into a new SAF pathway and the end-to-end platform development, even before the market had established large-scale examples of second-generation SAF.
However, it remains the only strategy capable of making affordable SAF available worldwide and achieving the gigatonne scale impact we aim for. The potential benefits far surpass the challenges, and as we validate the technology at larger scales, it's evident that this was a wise decision.