With petrol getting more and more expensive, the New Zealand government is looking at making it compulsory for some kind of biofuel to be available at the pump here.
But there is increasing debate over just how eco-friendly biofuels really are.
Forty countries around the world now offer subsidies to encourage people to use biofuels, or other alternatives to increasingly scarce fossil fuels.
Biofuel can be theoretically produced from any biological carbon source. The most common by far is photosynthetic plants that capture solar energy, but at least one local business were innovative with a little waste of their own.
Fast food company Burger Fuel has been on the biofuel bandwagon for a year, using old cooking oil to run delivery vans. Burger Fuel's Johnnie Promo says "it's actually really important" that businesses make the switch, and feels it was the right thing to do.
However, experts and humanitarian agencies say biofuels come with a caution.
"We've seen around the world that biofuels have the potential for serious levels of harm to the envionment and people." Oxfam's Jason Garman explains.
With a fast-changing and warming world looking to reduce carbon emissions, many are now convinced that one solution is to grow organic material and process it to fuel more eco-friendly travel.
But this has reached the point overseas where entire rainforests have been knocked down to make way for biofuel crops. And there's concern that redirecting food crops such as corn into their biofuel derivatives, just to run cars, will push escalating food prices up even further. The International Panel on Climate Change have noted that biofuel production may have grave implications for food security.
Despite the prospect of less reliance on polluting fossil fuels, Simon Boxer of Greenpeace says that it is crazy to consider a society "filling up SUVs and cars instead of feeding hungry people."
Garman says that according to Oxfam's calculations, biofuels have pushed an additional 30 million people worldwide into poverty.
Apart from Burger Fuel's initiative, biofuels are already being produced in New Zealand using waste products like tallow and whey.
But in one of the most remote parts of the country - Omarama, in the Mackenzie Basin - 2,000 hectares of land is being developed to grow our newest biofuel crop.
Biodiesel New Zealand has planted oilseed rape, or canola, here. Paul Quinn explains that the plant grows especially well in the South Island.
While the fields currently appear barren and unproductive, come springtime, the shoots will start to look more obvious. Once harvested, they will be turned into biofuel and could eventually be served to motorists at their local petrol stations.
And appeasing some of the concerns about biofuel crops, they say they are doing all they can to be green, watching their own carbon footprint.
"One of the conditions of us farming here is that we dont contaminate the waterway." Quinn explains. "So we're going to use an organic fertiliser that breaks down very, very quickly."
As well, they intend to run their own cars on biodiesel.
"If you're gonna talk the talk, you've gotta walk the walk. "
But lobby groups are still worried about what could happen.
"As demand increases, more and more corners will be cut, and we will see higher fertilliser use, higher greenhouse gas emissions." Greenpeace's Boxer predicts.
"Vast quantities - I believe hundreds and hundreds of thousands of hectares - will be needed to supply New Zealand's liquid fuel consumption."
One Christchurch factory already processing biofuel from other crops expects to produce 15 million litres next year, and is in talks with oil companies to provide biofuel at the pump.
New government targets are due in October, but Greenpeace says there's a more simple solution. "Walking...cycling. Those are answers."
Instead, we could find ourselves exhausting less expensive, and less damaging human fuel.
