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

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to conventional kerosene and these so far seem to boil down to various types of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with minimal biofuel use 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 poor for growing mainstream foods.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to perform research study and development into using 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 begin explore new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut harmful emissions by 10%.

One truly encouraging development has been the move away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thereby preventing a . Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

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