It's bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics could start having a dig at industrial airplane flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from rising oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover practical options to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous types of biofuel.

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

Jatropha is a genus of around 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 finest 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 major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to bring out research and advancement into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would act as strategic specialists for the project.

The current airline to begin try out brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually performed internal US flights utilizing 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 far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thus avoiding a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in usage of biofuels in vehicles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and motorists will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving just to satisfy another person's green credentials.