It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be described as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover practical options to conventional kerosene and these so far appear to come down to numerous types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods.

Jatropha is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the finest prospects for future biodiesel production. It is to drought and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as tactical specialists for the task.

The current airline company to start explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One truly motivating development has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which compete head on with food customers thus preventing a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in use of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended true blessing indeed if some people wound up starving simply to satisfy another person's green qualifications.