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Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Path To Redemption

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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a “miracle” biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree belonging to Central America, it was wildly promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on degraded 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 resulted in plantation failures nearly everywhere. The after-effects of the jatropha crash was polluted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.

Today, some researchers continue pursuing the evasive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they state, is dependent on cracking the yield problem and attending to the hazardous land-use concerns intertwined with its original failure.

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

At the beginning of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree belonging to Central America, was planted across the world. The rush to jatropha was driven by its pledge as a sustainable source of biofuel that might be grown on deteriorated, unfertile lands so as not to displace food crops. But inflated claims of high yields fell flat.

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

“All those companies that stopped working, embraced a plug-and-play design of hunting for the wild varieties of jatropha. But to advertise it, you require to domesticate it. This belongs of the procedure that was missed out on [throughout the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

Having learned from the errors of jatropha’s past failures, he states the oily plant might yet play a crucial role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, reducing transport carbon emissions at the global level. A brand-new boom could bring additional benefits, with jatropha also a potential source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some researchers are hesitant, keeping in mind that jatropha has already gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach full potential, then it is vital to gain from previous mistakes. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were obstructed not just by bad yields, but by land grabbing, logging, and social problems in countries where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts likewise recommend that jatropha’s tale provides lessons for scientists and business owners exploring promising new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, significant bust

Jatropha’s early 21st-century appeal originated from its guarantee as a “second-generation” biofuel, which are sourced from lawns, trees and other plants not obtained from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its several purported virtues was a capability to flourish on degraded or “marginal” lands; therefore, it was declared it would never complete with food crops, so the theory went.

Back then, jatropha ticked all packages, says Alexandros Gasparatos, now at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Future Initiatives. “We had a crop that seemed miraculous; that can grow without too much fertilizer, too numerous pesticides, or too much need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not contend with food due to the fact that it is toxic.”

Governments, global firms, financiers and companies purchased into the buzz, launching initiatives to plant, or promise to plant, countless 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 got ready for WWF.

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

In 2009, a Buddies of the Earth report from Eswatini (still known at the time as Swaziland) cautioned that jatropha’s high needs for land would indeed bring it into direct dispute with food crops. By 2011, an international evaluation noted that “growing surpassed both scientific understanding of the crop’s potential in addition to an understanding of how the crop suits existing rural economies and the degree to which it can flourish on limited lands.”

Projections estimated 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, only 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations started to fail as anticipated yields refused to materialize. Jatropha could grow on degraded lands and endure dry spell conditions, as claimed, but yields stayed bad.

“In my opinion, this mix of speculative investment, export-oriented potential, and possible to grow under fairly poorer conditions, produced a huge problem,” leading to “underestimated yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos says.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were likewise pestered by environmental, social and financial problems, say professionals. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and cleaning of natural locations were reported.

Studies discovered that land-use modification for jatropha in countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania resulted in a loss of biodiversity. A research study from Mexico found the “carbon repayment” of jatropha plantations due to associated forest loss ranged between 2 and 14 years, and “in some scenarios, the carbon debt might never be recuperated.” In India, production revealed carbon advantages, however using fertilizers led to boosts of soil and water “acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication.”

“If you take a look at the majority of the plantations in Ghana, they declare that the jatropha curcas produced was positioned on minimal land, however the idea of marginal land is very evasive,” describes Abubakari Ahmed, a speaker at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha plantations in the country over several years, and found that a lax definition of “limited” indicated that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying unblemished and unused was often illusory.

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

Learning from jatropha

There are crucial lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, say experts, which should be observed when considering other advantageous second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in financial investment], but regrettably not of research, and action was taken based on 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 buzz was unwinding, Muys and associates published a paper mentioning crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he describes, there was a lack of knowledge about the plant itself and its needs. This essential requirement for upfront research might be applied to other possible biofuel crops, he says. Last year, for example, his group 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 abject and minimal land. But Muys’s research revealed yields to be highly variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that “pongamia still can not be thought about a considerable and stable source of biofuel feedstock due to continuing knowledge gaps.” Use of such cautionary information might prevent wasteful monetary speculation and reckless land conversion for new biofuels.

“There are other very appealing trees or plants that could work as a fuel or a biomass producer,” Muys says. “We desired to prevent [them going] in the exact same direction of early buzz and fail, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos underlines crucial requirements that need to be fulfilled before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields should be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields understood, and an all set market must be offered.

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

How biofuel lands are gotten is likewise key, states Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were purchased for production, authorities need to guarantee that “standards are put in location to check how massive land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to reduce a few of the problems we observed.”

A jatropha resurgence?

Despite all these challenges, some researchers still think that under the right conditions, jatropha might be a valuable biofuel solution – particularly 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 ideal material, grown in the ideal location, and so on,” Muys stated.

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

Alherbawi’s group is conducting continuous field studies to improve jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an included benefit, he imagines a jatropha green belt covering 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The implementation of the green belt can really improve the soil and farming lands, and secure them against any more deterioration caused by dust storms,” he says.

But the Qatar job’s success still depends upon lots of aspects, not least the ability to obtain quality yields from the tree. Another crucial step, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production technology that utilizes the whole 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) dealing with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian explains that years of research study and advancement have resulted in varieties of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were lacking more than a decade ago.

“We were able to hasten the yield cycle, enhance the yield variety and enhance the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian states. 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 looking at. The fruit and its by-products could be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal alternative (crucial in Africa where much wood is still burned for cooking), and even bioplastics.

But it is the transportation sector that still beckons as the perfect biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has once again resumed with the energy transition 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 finished, but he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions related to the oily plant will be “competitive … These 2 elements – that it is technically ideal, and the carbon sequestration – makes it a really strong candidate for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he states. “Our company believe any such expansion will occur, [by clarifying] the definition of degraded land, [enabling] no competition with food crops, nor in any way threatening food security of any nation.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can genuinely be carbon neutral, eco-friendly and socially accountable depends on complicated elements, 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 government revealed its objective to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a national biofuels push that has stirred argument over possible effects. The Gran Chaco’s dry forest biome is already in deep problem, having actually been greatly deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.

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

Other scientists chronicle the “potential of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists stay doubtful of the eco-friendly viability of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it perhaps becomes so effective, that we will have a lot of associated land-use change,” says Daniel Itzamna Avila-Ortega, co-founder of the Mexican Center of Industrial Ecology and a Ph.D. trainee with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has actually performed research study on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega points out previous land-use problems associated with expansion of different crops, consisting of oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not handle the private sector doing whatever they desire, in regards to creating environmental issues.”

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

He recommends restricting jatropha growth in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it only in truly poor soils in need of repair. “Jatropha might be one of those plants that can grow in extremely sterile wastelands,” he describes. “That’s the only way I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest healing method for wastelands. Otherwise, the involved problems are higher than the prospective benefits.”

Jatropha’s international future remains unsure. And its possible as a tool in the battle versus environment change can just be opened, say lots of professionals, by preventing the list of troubles connected with its first boom.

Will jatropha projects that sputtered to a halt in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian thinks its role as a sustainable biofuel is “imminent” which the resurgence is on. “We have strong interest from the energy market now,” he says, “to collaborate with us to establish and broaden 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 primer: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world effects

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