Commercial airlines and manufacturers are combining efforts to create a more sustainable air travel industry. The Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group aims to reduce the industry’s environmental and climate change impacts by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, commercializing sustainable biofuels for aviation purposes, preventing the breakdown of biodiversity, and creating and marketing these fuels.

The World Wildlife Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is helping the Group find ways to minimize impacts on land, water and energy resources during the production of the biomass used to create aviation biofuels.

The Group makes up a significant sector of the aviation industry, approximately 15 percent (according to press coverage). It has set the standards high: all biofuels used for aviation purposes must perform just as well or better than the performance of kerosene jet fuel and prevent greenhouse gas emissions.

That's a tall order for biofuels. Yale and NRDC scientists will experiment on various vegetation and other typical biofuels raw products to formulate a fuel that meets these standards.

Members of the group include Boeing, Honeywell, Air France, Air New Zealand, All Nippon Airways, Cargolux, Gulf Air, Japan Airlines, KLM, SAS and Virgin Atlantic Airways.