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 native to Central America, it was extremely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that could grow on abject lands throughout 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 almost all over. The after-effects of the jatropha crash was polluted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.

Today, some researchers continue pursuing the evasive guarantee of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they say, is reliant on cracking the yield issue and addressing the hazardous land-use concerns intertwined with its original failure.

The sole remaining big jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated ranges have actually been attained 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 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 guarantee as a sustainable source of biofuel that might be grown on broken down, unfertile lands so as not to displace food crops. But inflated claims of high yields fell flat.

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

“All those companies that failed, embraced a plug-and-play model of hunting for the wild ranges of jatropha curcas. But to advertise it, you require to domesticate it. This belongs of the process that was missed out on [during the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian informed Mongabay in an interview.

Having gained from the mistakes of jatropha’s previous failures, he states the oily plant could yet play a crucial role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, lowering transportation carbon emissions at the global level. A brand-new boom could bring extra advantages, with jatropha likewise a potential source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are hesitant, noting that jatropha has currently gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They warn that if the plant is to reach complete capacity, then it is necessary to gain from past errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were obstructed not only by bad yields, however by land grabbing, logging, and social problems in countries where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil operates.

Experts also recommend that jatropha‘s tale offers lessons for scientists and business owners checking out promising new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, significant bust

Jatropha’s early 21st-century appeal came from its guarantee as a “second-generation” biofuel, which are sourced from grasses, trees and other plants not obtained from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its multiple supposed virtues was a capability to grow on abject or “limited” lands; therefore, it was declared it would never ever contend with food crops, so the theory went.

Back then, jatropha ticked all packages, states Alexandros Gasparatos, now at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Future Initiatives. “We had a crop that seemed amazing; that can grow without too much fertilizer, a lot of pesticides, or excessive demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not compete with food since it is poisonous.”

Governments, international companies, financiers and business bought into the buzz, launching 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 wish for the mirage of the amazing biofuel tree to fade.

In 2009, a Friends of the Earth report from Eswatini (still understood at the time as Swaziland) warned that jatropha’s high demands for land would certainly bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, a worldwide review kept in mind that “growing exceeded both scientific understanding of the crop’s capacity along with an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can grow on minimal 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 began to stop working as anticipated yields declined to emerge. Jatropha could grow on degraded lands and endure dry spell conditions, as claimed, however yields remained bad.

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

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

Studies found that land-use change for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania resulted in a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico found the “carbon payback” of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss ranged between two and 14 years, and “in some scenarios, the carbon financial obligation might never be recovered.” In India, production revealed carbon benefits, however making use of fertilizers resulted in increases 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 produced was situated on marginal land, but the concept of marginal land is really elusive,” 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 “marginal” meant that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha curcas plantations had been lying untouched and unused was typically illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The fact that … currently nobody is using [land] for farming doesn’t suggest that nobody is utilizing it [for other purposes] There are a lot of nature-based livelihoods on those landscapes that you might not necessarily see from satellite images.”

Learning from jatropha

There are crucial lessons to be learned from the experience with jatropha, say experts, which must be hearkened when thinking about other advantageous second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in financial investment], but unfortunately not of research study, and action was taken based on alleged advantages of jatropha,” says 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 unwinding, Muys and coworkers released a paper mentioning crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he describes, there was an absence of knowledge about the plant itself and its requirements. This essential requirement for in advance research study could be used to other possible biofuel crops, he states. In 2015, for example, his team launched a paper examining the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a “fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree species” with biofuel promise.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on degraded and limited land. But Muys’s research revealed yields to be extremely variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that “pongamia still can not be considered a substantial and stable source of biofuel feedstock due to continuing understanding gaps.” Use of such cautionary information might avoid inefficient financial speculation and reckless land conversion for new biofuels.

“There are other really appealing trees or plants that could function as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer,” Muys states. “We wished to avoid [them going] in the exact same direction of early buzz and fail, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos highlights vital requirements that must be fulfilled before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and a prepared market must be available.

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

How biofuel lands are gotten is likewise key, states Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were acquired for production, authorities should guarantee that “standards are put in location to examine how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to decrease some of the problems we observed.”

A jatropha resurgence?

Despite all these challenges, some researchers still think that under the right conditions, jatropha could be an important biofuel solution – especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector “responsible for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I think jatropha has some prospective, however it needs to be the ideal product, grown in the right place, and so on,” Muys said.

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 may minimize airline company carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its usage as a jet fuel might lead to about a 40% decrease of “cradle to tomb” emissions.

Alherbawi’s group is conducting ongoing field research studies to boost 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 application of the green belt can really enhance the soil and agricultural lands, and safeguard them against any further wear and tear triggered by dust storms,” he says.

But the Qatar task’s success still depends upon numerous aspects, not least the capability to get quality yields from the tree. Another vital action, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production innovation that uses the totality of the jatropha fruit to increase processing effectiveness.

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) dealing with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian explains that years of research and advancement have actually led to varieties of jatropha that can now accomplish the high yields that were doing not have more than a years earlier.

“We were able to quicken the yield cycle, enhance the yield variety and boost the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian says. In essence, he mentions, the tree is now domesticated. “Our first job is to expand 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 transportation sector that still beckons as the perfect biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has actually as soon as again reopened with the energy transition drive for oil companies and bio-refiners – [driven by] the search for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly.”

A total jatropha life-cycle evaluation has yet to be finished, but he believes that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions connected to the oily plant will be “competitive … These 2 aspects – that it is technically appropriate, and the carbon sequestration – makes it a really strong prospect for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he says. “We believe any such expansion will occur, [by clarifying] the definition of abject land, [allowing] no competition with food crops, nor in any way threatening food security of any country.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha curcas can really be carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and socially responsible depends upon intricate elements, consisting of where and how it’s grown – whether, for example, its production model is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state experts. Then there’s the irritating problem of achieving high yields.

Earlier this year, the Bolivian government revealed its intent to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a national biofuels push that has stirred dispute over possible repercussions. 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 became problematic for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was typically unfavorable in most of the jatropha websites, because the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he describes.

Other scientists chronicle the “capacity of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other researchers stay uncertain of the environmental viability of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it possibly becomes so effective, that we will have a great deal of associated land-use modification,” states 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 carried out research on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega cites previous land-use issues related to expansion of different crops, consisting of oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our police is so weak that it can not handle the economic sector doing whatever they want, in regards to creating ecological issues.”

Researchers in Mexico are currently exploring jatropha-based animals feed as a low-priced and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages may be well fit to local contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he remains concerned about prospective ecological costs.

He recommends limiting jatropha growth in Mexico to make it a “crop that conquers land,” growing it just in genuinely poor soils in need of restoration. “Jatropha might be one of those plants that can grow in very sterilized wastelands,” he describes. “That’s the only way I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest recovery technique for wastelands. Otherwise, the involved issues are greater than the potential benefits.”

Jatropha’s international future stays unsure. And its as a tool in the fight versus climate modification can just be unlocked, say numerous experts, by preventing the litany of problems related to its very first boom.

Will jatropha projects that sputtered to a halt in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian thinks 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 team up with us to develop 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 guide: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world impacts

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