英“地沟油航班”首飞成功 遭环保人士抗议

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 2017.

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。

英国首架使用环保生物燃料“地沟油”的商业航班近日从伯明翰机场始发，试飞成功。

英国汤普森航空公司的这架波音757航班使用的燃料中，厨房废油和传统航油各占一半。

这架航班于上周四(英国夏令时)14时25分起飞前往西班牙兰萨罗特，机上共有232名乘客。但“地沟油航班”没有安排后续飞行，因为现在还无法保证“地沟油”的定期供应。

汤普森航空公司表示，从2017年开始，这趟定期航班将每日都使用“地沟油”作燃料。

公司希望在此之前能降低生物燃料的成本。

这架航班使用了六千升经过处理的“地沟油”，成本将近1.4万英镑，是等量航油价格的4倍。

伯明翰机场总经理保罗•基霍伊说：“总有人要做第一个吃螃蟹的人，既然你要首先尝试，试验的成本当然就很高。”

“一旦产量上升，成本就会下降，更重要的是，这会减少碳排放。”

“地沟油航班”原定于今年7月首飞，但由于燃料配送问题，被迫延期。

汤普森航空公司表示，如果抛开燃料不谈，这就是一次普通飞行，乘客应该感觉不到不同。

波音飞机曾使用生物燃料完成示范飞行，全球几个其他航线最近也曾进行类似飞行。

在2008年，维珍大西洋航空公司的一架波音747飞机示范性地使用了生物混合燃料完成了从伦敦至阿姆斯特丹的无乘客飞行。

生物燃料的提取来源非常多，但提取自餐厨垃圾的生物燃料被公认为最环保的几种之一。

“地沟油航班”遭到环保人士抗议，他们提醒称，如果燃料提取自植物，那么所产生的碳排放总量其实比矿物燃料还要多。

“地球之友”环保组织的乔·皮考克说：“要想减少碳排放，就必须得少飞，没什么别的办法。”