Other points in the Lufthansa program include:

• Lufthansa expressly supports the IATA fuel-efficiency target and intends to reduce its CO₂ emissions per flown kilometer by 25% by 2020 against the level in 2006.

• Lufthansa supports the ACARE target of reducing nitrogen oxide emissions by 80% by 2020 compared with the level in the year 2000.

• Lufthansa supports ecologically-oriented incentive systems, which rest on an economic and revenue-neutral basis, e.g. emission-based landing fees, which were introduced earlier this year at Frankfurt and Munich Airports.

• Lufthansa will further pursue diverse noise abatement measures and is cooperating in related research projects designed to achieve the ACARE objective of halving noise emissions by 2020.

• Lufthansa will continue to advocate within international organizations a practicable solution for including air traffic in emissions trading.

The 15 guidelines ensue from the four-pillar strategy: technical progress, improved infrastructure, operational measures, and economic instruments.

Lufthansa has not specified a test flight schedule or biofuel options at this point.

Earlier in June, Air New Zealand announced that it expects to use at least one million barrels of environmentally sustainable fuel annually by 2013. Air New Zealand planes consumed 8.4 million barrels in 2007, according to its annual report.

Chief Executive Officer Rob Fyfe said the airline is growing increasingly confident that commercial quantities of environmentally sustainable fuels that meet all stringent criteria will become available over the next few years.

The air carrier said that it will use fuel sourced from jatropha in a flight test on a Boeing 747-400 with Rolls Royce engines in Auckland in the last quarter of this year subject to final regulatory approvals and fuel testing by the engine manufacturer.

Air New Zealand has been non-negotiable about three criteria an environmentally sustainable fuel must meet for its test flight program.

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.

—Rob Fyfe

The jatropha oil Air New Zealand is sourcing for refining for its test flight comes from South Eastern Africa (Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania) and India. Air New Zealand’s criteria for sourcing the jatropha oil was the land was neither forest land nor virgin grassland within the previous two decades. The quality of the soil and climate is such that the land is not suitable for the vast majority of food crops. Furthermore, the plantations are rain-fed and not mechanically irrigated.

Jatropha is unlikely to be the only fuel that Air New Zealand is involved in testing, according to Fyfe.