It's bad enough for some propeller aircrafts to be explained as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics could begin having a dig at business airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable options to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to come down to different types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used various blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods items.

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to carry out research and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic consultants for the project.

The newest airline company to start try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has conducted 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 damaging emissions by 10%.

One really advancement has actually been the move far from biofuels which contend head on with food consumers thereby preventing a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles triggered a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing indeed if some individuals wound up starving just to please somebody else's green credentials.