FollowThe UK’s first commercial flight to be powered by biofuels will take off on Thursday, heading to the Canary Islands and into a storm of controversy.
Thomson Airways’ 14.25 service from Birmingham airport to Arrecife, on the island of Lanzarote, will be a scheduled flight like any other – except that one of the plane’s engines will run on a mixture of standard fuel and biofuel made from waste cooking oil.
But while Thomson, the airline business of TUI Travel, hailed the flight as the start of a new era that would take aviation beyond fossil fuels, environmental campaigners slammed the pilot project as a gimmick that would end up harming the environment.
The project has the support of MPs and the government’s aviation minister, Theresa Villiers, who said: “Sustainable biofuels have a role to play in efforts to tackle climate change, particularly in sectors where no other viable low carbon energy source has been identified – as is the case with aviation. We want aviation to flourish and grow but we have also been clear that the environmental impacts of flying must be addressed.”
Green campaigners attacked the use of waste cooking fat as a “hollow PR stunt”, because such fuel could only be used to power a tiny fraction of flights. Friends of the Earth calculated that each of the 232 passengers on Thursday’s four-hour flight would have to save all of their chip fat for 100 years in order to provide enough to power the plane.
Kenneth Richter, biofuels campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “Biofuels won’t make flying any greener – their production is wrecking rainforests, pushing up food prices and causing yet more climate-changing emissions. The government must curb future demand for flights by halting airport expansion, promoting video conferencing, and developing faster, better and affordable rail services.”
The problem is that biofuels – once greeted by green campaigners as an alternative to fossil fuels – are now regarded as even more environmentally destructive than the fuels they replace. Natural oils such as palm oil are now hugely valuable globally traded commodities, and the rush to cash in has led to the widespread destruction of rainforest in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.
For these reasons, green pressure groups want a moratorium on the use of biofuels. There have been moves to set up standards that would ensure any biofuels from oils such as palm oil come only from environmentally sustainable sources, but the supply is still only a fraction of the demand for plant-based oils.
The Boeing 757 plane with Rolls-Royce engines will use biofuel only from waste fats that have been processed to make them suitable. But the company concedes that the supply of such oils is relatively small.
Aviation currently accounts for around 2-3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a proportion that is likely to increase. Air transport is not included in emissions targets under the Kyoto protocol, but the European Union plans to include flights to, from and within the bloc in its emissions trading scheme, which would penalise the airlines with the highest relative emissions. This move is bitterly opposed by the US, China and several other non-EU countries.
Source: guardian
