If you haven’t flown and/or seen the news recently, you may not have noticed that airlines are having some problems with the price of fuel and the like. So now they’re charging twenty-five bucks for your first bag and eighty bucks to let you off at your destination. But Air New Zealand is trying something different. The airline has just issued a press release stating that it expects to use one million barrels of sustainable fuels by 2013.

Air New Zealand, as well, is not content with using ethanol or another food-derived product. There are three criteria the airline is using to decide if a fuel is viable, according to CEO Rob Fyfe:

“Firstly, it must be environmentally sustainable and not compete with existing food stocks. Secondly, the fuel must be at least as good as the product we use today. Finally, it should be significantly cheaper than existing fuel supplies and be readily available.”

The airline is testing jatropha oil as a viable source of jetfuel. No, I don’t know what jatropha is, either but apparently is

a plant that grows to approximately three metres high and produces seed that contain inedible lipid oil that is used to produce fuel. Each seed produces between 30 and 40 percent of its mass in oil and jatropha can be grown in a range of difficult conditions, including arid and non-arable areas.

This isn’t the only source of fuel the airline will be testing, but it’s certainly a good start. takepart to read the press release, and takepart here to read a prior story about what the airline has already done to try and lower emissions.