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 native to Central America, it was wildly promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that could grow on degraded lands throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia.

A jatropha rush ensued, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields caused plantation failures nearly all over. The aftermath of the jatropha crash was polluted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.

Today, some scientists continue pursuing the evasive pledge of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they state, depends on breaking the yield problem and attending to the harmful land-use issues linked with its initial failure.

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

At the start of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree native 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 deteriorated, unfertile lands so as not to displace food crops. But inflated claims of high yields failed.

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

“All those companies that failed, adopted a plug-and-play design of hunting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to advertise it, you require to domesticate it. This is a part of the procedure that was missed [throughout the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

Having gained from the errors of jatropha’s past failures, he says the oily plant might yet play a key role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, reducing transportation carbon emissions at the global level. A brand-new boom might bring fringe benefits, with jatropha likewise 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 caution that if the plant is to reach complete capacity, then it is necessary to gain from previous errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered not only by bad yields, however by land grabbing, logging, and social issues in countries where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil runs.

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

Miracle shrub, significant bust

Jatropha’s early 21st-century appeal stemmed from its promise as a “second-generation” biofuel, which are sourced from lawns, trees and other plants not derived from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its several supposed virtues was an ability to flourish on degraded or “marginal” lands; therefore, it was claimed it would never contend with food crops, so the theory went.

Back then, jatropha ticked all the boxes, states Alexandros Gasparatos, now at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Future Initiatives. “We had a crop that seemed incredible; that can grow without excessive fertilizer, too lots of pesticides, or excessive need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not take on food due to the fact that it is poisonous.”

Governments, worldwide companies, financiers and business bought into the buzz, releasing initiatives 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 got ready for WWF.

It didn’t take wish for the mirage of the incredible biofuel tree to fade.

In 2009, a Friends of the Earth report from Eswatini (still understood at the time as Swaziland) alerted that jatropha’s high demands for land would indeed bring it into direct dispute with food crops. By 2011, an international review kept in mind that “cultivation outmatched both clinical understanding of the crop’s capacity along with an understanding of how the crop suits existing rural economies and the degree to which it can prosper on marginal 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, just 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations began to stop working as anticipated yields refused to materialize. Jatropha could grow on degraded lands and endure dry spell conditions, as claimed, however yields remained bad.

“In my viewpoint, this combination of speculative financial investment, export-oriented potential, and prospective to grow under fairly poorer conditions, developed a huge issue,” leading to “ignored yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos says.

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

Studies discovered that land-use change for jatropha in countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania led to a loss of biodiversity. A research study from Mexico found the “carbon payback” of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss varied in between two and 14 years, and “in some situations, the carbon financial obligation may never be recuperated.” In India, production showed carbon benefits, however the usage of fertilizers resulted in boosts 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 positioned on limited land, but the concept of marginal land is really evasive,” explains Abubakari Ahmed, a speaker at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha plantations in the country over a number of years, and discovered that a lax definition of “marginal” suggested that presumptions 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 no one is using [land] for farming doesn’t imply that no one is using it [for other functions] 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 essential lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, state analysts, which must be hearkened when thinking about other auspicious second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in financial investment], however unfortunately not of research study, and action was taken based on supposed advantages of jatropha,” states Bart Muys, a teacher in the Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape at the University of Leuven, Belgium. In 2014, as the jatropha buzz was winding down, Muys and coworkers released a paper citing key lessons.

Fundamentally, he describes, there was a lack of knowledge about the plant itself and its requirements. This crucial requirement for upfront research might be used to other prospective biofuel crops, he states. In 2015, for example, his group released a paper examining the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a “fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree types” with biofuel guarantee.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on degraded and minimal land. But Muys’s research showed yields to be extremely variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that “pongamia still can not be considered a significant and stable source of biofuel feedstock due to persisting knowledge spaces.” Use of such cautionary data could prevent inefficient monetary speculation and reckless land conversion for new biofuels.

“There are other extremely promising trees or plants that could function as a fuel or a biomass producer,” Muys states. “We desired to prevent [them going] in the same instructions of early hype and fail, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos highlights important requirements that need to be fulfilled before moving ahead with new biofuel plantations: high yields should be opened, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and an all set market must be readily available.

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

How biofuel lands are acquired is likewise essential, says Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were purchased for production, authorities should guarantee that “standards are put in place to check how massive land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to reduce some of the issues we observed.”

A jatropha comeback?

Despite all these difficulties, some researchers still believe that under the ideal conditions, jatropha might be an important biofuel solution – particularly for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector “responsible for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I believe jatropha has some potential, but it needs to be the ideal product, grown in the ideal 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 way that Qatar might lower airline carbon emissions. According to his quotes, its use as a jet fuel might result in about a 40% reduction of “cradle to grave” emissions.

Alherbawi’s team is carrying out ongoing 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 execution of the green belt can actually boost the soil and agricultural lands, and secure them against any further deterioration brought on by dust storms,” he states.

But the Qatar task’s success still depends upon lots of factors, not least the ability to obtain quality yields from the tree. Another crucial action, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production technology that utilizes the whole of the jatropha fruit to increase processing performance.

Back in Ghana, jOil is currently managing 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 and development have resulted in varieties of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were doing not have more than a decade earlier.

“We had the ability to quicken the yield cycle, improve the yield variety and enhance the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian says. In essence, he mentions, the tree is now domesticated. “Our very first task is to broaden our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares.”

Biofuels aren’t the only application JOil is looking at. The fruit and its byproducts could be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal alternative (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 ideal biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has actually when again resumed with the energy shift drive for oil business and bio-refiners – [driven by] the search for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly.”

A total jatropha life-cycle assessment has yet to be finished, however he believes that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions connected to the oily plant will be “competitive … These two aspects – that it is technically suitable, and the carbon sequestration – makes it a very strong prospect for adoption for … sustainable air travel,” he states. “Our company believe any such growth will occur, [by clarifying] the meaning of abject land, [allowing] no competitors with food crops, nor in any method threatening food security of any country.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can truly be carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and socially responsible depends upon intricate aspects, including where and how it’s grown – whether, for instance, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state specialists. Then there’s the nagging problem of accomplishing high yields.

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

Many previous plantations in Ghana, alerts Ahmed, converted dry savanna woodland, which ended up being problematic for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was typically negative in the majority 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 “potential of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists remain skeptical of the ecological practicality of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it perhaps becomes so successful, that we will have a great deal of associated land-use modification,” 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 actually conducted research study on the possibilities of jatropha adding to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega points out previous land-use problems associated with growth of numerous crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not deal with the economic sector doing whatever they desire, in terms of creating environmental issues.”

Researchers in Mexico are currently checking out jatropha-based livestock feed as an affordable and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses might be well fit to local contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he remains worried about potential environmental costs.

He recommends limiting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that conquers land,” growing it only in genuinely poor soils in need 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 healing strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated problems are greater than the prospective advantages.”

Jatropha’s worldwide future remains unpredictable. And its possible as a tool in the fight against environment modification can just be unlocked, say numerous experts, by preventing the list of troubles related to its very 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 “imminent” and that the comeback is on. “We have strong interest from the energy industry now,” he says, “to work together with us to establish 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).

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