CHICAGO, May 5 (UPI) -- Alternative fuels for cars and trucks are becoming increasingly viable, but there's another area of the transportation sector where they haven't quite taken off: aviation.

Convincing the aircraft industry to start full-scale use of petroleum alternatives won't be easy because of the risks involved with testing new fuels in airplanes. If the switch can be made, though, there are several advantages to using biodiesel over traditional jet fuel, said Robert Dunn, a food and oil researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"It's renewable, it can be domestically derived, it's readily biodegradable, it's relatively safe to handle and store … and it reduces most emissions," Dunn said at the World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing held last week in Chicago.

Any concerted effort to decrease global CO2 emissions will have to include the aviation industry, considering its large carbon footprint. The industry consumes 13 percent of the fossil fuels used by the transportation sector worldwide, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

And the effects of airplane emissions are much harsher on the atmosphere because of the high altitudes at which they operate, said Max Schauck, chair of the Institute of Air Science at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.