It's bad enough for some propeller planes to be referred to 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 market under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find practical options to standard kerosene and these so far seem to come down to different types of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel usage 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 considered too bad for growing mainstream foods.

jatropha curcas is a genus of around 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household 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 pests, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to research and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic experts for the task.

The most recent airline company to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging advancement has actually been the move away from biofuels which compete head on with food customers thus preventing a rate spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing undoubtedly if some people wound up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green qualifications.