It's bad enough for some prop planes to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics could begin having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and environmental legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to different types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use in 2008. This was rapidly 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 poor for growing mainstream foods items.

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and advancement into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic experts for the job.

The most recent airline to start explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One actually motivating development has actually been the relocation away from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize prices as US farmers diverted excessive 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 mixed blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.