英“地溝油航班”首飛成功 遭環保人士抗議

Britain's first commercial flight, powered by sustainable biofuel, has taken off from Birmingham Airport。

The Thomson Airways Boeing 757 used a 50/50 mix of used cooking oil and traditional aviation fuel。

Thursday's 14:25 BST flight to Lanzarote, with 232 passengers, will initially be a one-off, to allow a regular supply of oil to be sourced。

Thomson Airways said the scheduled flight would use biofuel on a daily basis from 2012.

Before then the company hopes the cost of biofuel can be brought down。

The flight was fuelled with 6,000 litres of processed cooking oil, costing almost £14,000 - four times the cost of the equivalent jet fuel。

Paul Kehoe, chief executive of Birmingham Airport, said: "Someone's got to be first and when you're first the experiments tend to be expensive。

"Once you ramp up production, the costs come down and more importantly the CO2 emissions come down."

The flight was originally scheduled to take place in July, but had to be delayed due to fuel delivery problems。

Thomson Airways said that in every other respect it would be a normal flight and passengers should not notice a difference。

The use of biofuels has already been tested by Boeing and several other airlines around the world have recently trialled similar flights。

In 2008 Virgin Atlantic flew a passenger-less Boeing 747 between London and Amsterdam powered partly by biofuel as a demonstration of the technology。

Biofuels come from many sources and those derived from waste products are considered to be some of the most sustainable。

Environmental campaigners have warned that some plant-based biofuels are responsible for producing even more carbon dioxide emissions than fossil fuels。

"We're going to have to fly less if we want to reduce emissions, there's no other way around it," Joe Peacock from Friends of the Earth said。英國首架使用環保生物燃料“地溝油”的商業航班近日從伯明翰機場始發，試飛成功。

英國湯普森航空公司的這架波音757航班使用的燃料中，廚房廢油和傳統航油各佔一半。

這架航班於上週四(英國夏令時)14時25分起飛前往西班牙蘭薩羅特，機上共有232名乘客。但“地溝油航班”沒有安排後續飛行，因爲現在還無法保證“地溝油”的定期供應。

湯普森航空公司表示，從2012年開始，這趟定期航班將每日都使用“地溝油”作燃料。

公司希望在此之前能降低生物燃料的成本。

這架航班使用了六千升經過處理的“地溝油”，成本將近1.4萬英鎊，是等量航油價格的4倍。

伯明翰機場總經理保羅•基霍伊說：“總有人要做第一個吃螃蟹的人，既然你要首先嚐試，試驗的成本當然就很高。”

“一旦產量上升，成本就會下降，更重要的是，這會減少碳排放。”

“地溝油航班”原定於今年7月首飛，但由於燃料配送問題，被迫延期。

湯普森航空公司表示，如果拋開燃料不談，這就是一次普通飛行，乘客應該感覺不到不同。

波音飛機曾使用生物燃料完成示範飛行，全球幾個其他航線最近也曾進行類似飛行。

在2008年，維珍大西洋航空公司的一架波音747飛機示範性地使用了生物混合燃料完成了從倫敦至阿姆斯特丹的無乘客飛行。

生物燃料的提取來源非常多，但提取自餐廚垃圾的生物燃料被公認爲最環保的幾種之一。

“地溝油航班”遭到環保人士抗議，他們提醒稱，如果燃料提取自植物，那麼所產生的碳排放總量其實比礦物燃料還要多。

“地球之友”環保組織的喬·皮考克說：“要想減少碳排放，就必須得少飛，沒什麼別的辦法。”