Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Path To Redemption

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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a “wonder” biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree belonging to Central America, it was extremely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on abject lands across Latin America, Africa and Asia.

A jatropha rush occurred, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields caused plantation failures nearly everywhere. The consequences of the jatropha crash was polluted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.

Today, some researchers continue pursuing the incredibly elusive pledge of high-yielding jatropha. A return, they state, depends on breaking the yield problem and addressing the damaging land-use problems intertwined with its original failure.

The sole staying large jatropha plantation is in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated ranges have been attained and a new boom is at hand. But even if this comeback fails, the world’s experience of jatropha holds crucial lessons for any promising up-and-coming biofuel.

At the start of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree belonging to Central America, was planted throughout the world. The rush to jatropha was driven by its promise as a sustainable source of biofuel that could be grown on broken down, unfertile lands so as not to displace food crops. But inflated claims of high yields failed.

Now, after years of research study and advancement, the sole remaining large plantation focused on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, claims the jatropha return is on.

“All those business that stopped working, adopted a plug-and-play model of hunting for the wild varieties of jatropha. But to advertise it, you need to domesticate it. This is a part of the process that was missed out on [during the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

Having discovered from the errors of jatropha’s previous failures, he says the oily plant could yet play a key role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, lowering transport carbon emissions at the worldwide level. A new boom might bring extra benefits, with jatropha also a prospective source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some researchers are skeptical, noting that jatropha has already gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They warn that if the plant is to reach full capacity, then it is necessary to gain from previous mistakes. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were hampered not only by poor yields, but by land grabbing, logging, and social problems in nations where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil operates.

Experts also recommend that jatropha’s tale offers lessons for researchers and business owners exploring promising brand-new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, significant bust

Jatropha’s early 21st-century appeal came from its promise as a “second-generation” biofuel, which are sourced from turfs, trees and other plants not originated from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its several purported virtues was an ability to thrive on abject or “minimal” lands; thus, it was claimed it would never take on food crops, so the theory went.

At that time, jatropha ticked all the boxes, says Alexandros Gasparatos, now at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Future Initiatives. “We had a crop that appeared miraculous; that can grow without excessive fertilizer, too many pesticides, or too much need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not take on food due to the fact that it is toxic.”

Governments, international firms, financiers and business purchased into the hype, introducing efforts to plant, or pledge to plant, millions of hectares of jatropha. By 2008, plantations covered some 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) in Latin America, Africa and Asia, according to a market research study prepared for WWF.

It didn’t take long for the mirage of the miraculous biofuel tree to fade.

In 2009, a Pals of the Earth report from Eswatini (still known at the time as Swaziland) cautioned that jatropha’s high demands for land would certainly bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, a global evaluation kept in mind that “cultivation surpassed both scientific understanding of the crop’s capacity as well as an understanding of how the crop suits existing rural economies and the degree to which it can thrive on limited lands.”

Projections approximated 4.7 million hectares (11.7 million acres) would be planted by 2010, and 12.8 million hectares (31.6 million acres) by 2015. However, just 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations started to stop working as anticipated yields refused to materialize. Jatropha could grow on abject lands and tolerate dry spell conditions, as claimed, however yields remained bad.

“In my opinion, this combination of speculative financial investment, export-oriented potential, and potential to grow under relatively poorer conditions, developed an extremely big issue,” leading to “underestimated yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos says.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were also afflicted by ecological, social and economic troubles, state specialists. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and clearing of natural locations were reported.

Studies discovered that land-use modification for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania caused a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico found the “carbon payback” of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss ranged in between two and 14 years, and “in some scenarios, the carbon financial obligation may never be recuperated.” In India, production showed carbon advantages, however the usage of fertilizers resulted in increases of soil and water “acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication.”

“If you look at the majority of the plantations in Ghana, they declare that the jatropha produced was situated on marginal land, but the concept of marginal land is extremely elusive,” explains Abubakari Ahmed, a speaker at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha plantations in the nation over a number of years, and discovered that a lax meaning of “minimal” indicated that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying unblemished and unused was typically illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The truth that … presently nobody is utilizing [land] for farming doesn’t indicate that no one is using it [for other purposes] There are a great deal of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you may not necessarily see from satellite images.”

Learning from jatropha

There are essential lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, state experts, which ought to be heeded when considering other advantageous second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in investment], but sadly not of research, and action was taken based upon alleged advantages of jatropha,” says Bart Muys, a professor in the Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape at the University of Leuven, Belgium. In 2014, as the jatropha hype was winding down, Muys and associates published a paper pointing out crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he discusses, there was a lack of understanding about the plant itself and its needs. This crucial requirement for in advance research could be applied to other prospective biofuel crops, he states. Last year, for example, his team released a paper examining the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a “fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree species” with biofuel pledge.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on degraded and minimal land. But Muys’s research study revealed yields to be highly variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that “pongamia still can not be thought about a substantial and stable source of biofuel feedstock due to continuing knowledge spaces.” Use of such cautionary information might avoid inefficient financial speculation and negligent land conversion for new biofuels.

“There are other extremely appealing trees or plants that could act as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer,” Muys says. “We wished to avoid [them going] in the same instructions of early hype and stop working, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos underlines important requirements that need to be met before continuing with new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and a prepared market should be offered.

“Basically, the crop requires to be domesticated, or [scientific understanding] at a level that we understand how it is grown,” Gasparatos says. Jatropha “was practically undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so unusual.”

How biofuel lands are gotten is also key, says Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were bought for production, authorities must make sure that “guidelines are put in place to check how massive land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to decrease a few of the problems we observed.”

A jatropha comeback?

Despite all these difficulties, some researchers still believe that under the best conditions, jatropha might be an important biofuel option – especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transport sector “accountable for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I think jatropha has some potential, but it requires to be the right product, grown in the right location, and so on,” Muys stated.

Mohammad Alherbawi, a postdoctoral research fellow at Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University, continues holding out hope for jatropha. He sees it as a manner in which Qatar might reduce airline company carbon emissions. According to his price quotes, its usage as a jet fuel might lead to about a 40% reduction of “cradle to tomb” emissions.

Alherbawi’s group is conducting continuous field research studies to increase jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an included advantage, he envisages a jatropha green belt covering 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The implementation of the green belt can truly improve the soil and farming lands, and safeguard them versus any additional wear and tear triggered by dust storms,” he says.

But the success still hinges on numerous factors, not least the ability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another crucial action, Alherbawi describes, is scaling up production technology that utilizes the totality of the jatropha fruit to increase processing effectiveness.

Back in Ghana, jOil is currently handling more than 1,300 hectares (1,830 acres) of jatropha, and growing a pilot plot on 300 hectares (740 acres) working with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian describes that years of research study and advancement have actually led to ranges of jatropha that can now accomplish the high yields that were lacking more than a years back.

“We had the ability to speed up the yield cycle, enhance the yield variety and boost the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian says. In essence, he states, the tree is now domesticated. “Our first task is to expand our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares.”

Biofuels aren’t the only application JOil is taking a look at. The fruit and its by-products could be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal substitute (important in Africa where much wood is still burned for cooking), and even bioplastics.

But it is the transport sector that still beckons as the perfect biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has actually when again reopened with the energy shift drive for oil companies and bio-refiners – [driven by] the search for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly.”

A complete jatropha life-cycle assessment has yet to be completed, however he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions associated with the oily plant will be “competitive … These 2 aspects – that it is technically suitable, and the carbon sequestration – makes it an extremely strong candidate for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he states. “Our company believe any such growth will happen, [by clarifying] the meaning of degraded land, [permitting] no competitors with food crops, nor in any way threatening food security of any nation.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can really be carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and socially responsible depends on intricate aspects, consisting of where and how it’s grown – whether, for instance, its production model is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state professionals. Then there’s the unpleasant issue of accomplishing high yields.

Earlier this year, the Bolivian federal government announced its objective to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a nationwide biofuels press that has actually stirred argument over possible effects. The Gran Chaco’s dry forest biome is currently in deep difficulty, having actually been heavily deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.

Many previous plantations in Ghana, warns Ahmed, transformed dry savanna forest, which ended up being bothersome for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was often negative in most of the jatropha websites, because the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he explains.

Other researchers chronicle the “capacity of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other researchers remain skeptical of the environmental practicality of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it possibly ends up being so successful, that we will have a great deal of associated land-use change,” says Daniel Itzamna Avila-Ortega, co-founder of the Mexican Center of Industrial Ecology and a Ph.D. student with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has carried out research study on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega mentions past land-use problems associated with growth of different crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not manage the economic sector doing whatever they desire, in terms of developing ecological problems.”

Researchers in Mexico are presently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as an affordable and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages might be well matched to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he remains worried about potential ecological costs.

He suggests restricting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that conquers land,” growing it only in genuinely bad soils in requirement of remediation. “Jatropha could be among those plants that can grow in really sterilized wastelands,” he discusses. “That’s the only way I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest recovery method for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated problems are higher than the prospective benefits.”

Jatropha’s worldwide future remains unpredictable. And its possible as a tool in the battle against climate change can only be opened, state numerous professionals, by preventing the litany of troubles connected with its first boom.

Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a halt in the early 2000s be fired back up once again? Subramanian believes its function as a sustainable biofuel is “impending” which the return is on. “We have strong interest from the energy market now,” he states, “to collaborate with us to develop and expand the supply chain of jatropha.”

Banner image: Jatropha curcas trees in Hawai’i. Image by Forest and Kim Starr via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

A liquid biofuels guide: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world effects

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