Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Course To Redemption

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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a “miracle” biofuel. A simple 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 everywhere. The aftermath of the jatropha crash was polluted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.

Today, some scientists continue pursuing the incredibly elusive pledge of high-yielding jatropha. A return, they say, is reliant on the yield issue and attending to the damaging land-use concerns linked with its initial failure.

The sole remaining big jatropha plantation is in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated ranges have actually been accomplished and a new boom is at hand. But even if this comeback 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, a simple shrub-like tree native to Central America, was planted throughout the world. The rush to jatropha was driven by its pledge 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 remaining large plantation concentrated on growing jatropha is in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha return is on.

“All those companies that failed, embraced a plug-and-play design of hunting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to commercialize 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 informed Mongabay in an interview.

Having discovered from the mistakes of jatropha’s past failures, he says the oily plant might yet play an essential function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, minimizing transport carbon emissions at the global level. A brand-new boom might bring additional benefits, with jatropha also a potential source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are skeptical, noting that jatropha has actually already gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach complete capacity, then it is important to learn from past mistakes. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were hampered not just by poor yields, however by land grabbing, logging, and social problems in countries where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts also suggest that jatropha’s tale uses lessons for scientists and business owners checking out appealing new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, major 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 derived from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its several purported virtues was an ability to flourish on degraded or “minimal” lands; therefore, it was claimed it would never ever 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 appeared miraculous; that can grow without excessive fertilizer, too many pesticides, or too much demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not take on food because it is poisonous.”

Governments, global firms, investors and companies bought into the buzz, launching efforts to plant, or pledge 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 study prepared for WWF.

It didn’t take wish 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 dispute with food crops. By 2011, an international review noted that “cultivation surpassed 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 thrive 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, only 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations started to stop working as anticipated yields declined to materialize. Jatropha could grow on abject lands and endure dry spell conditions, as declared, however yields remained poor.

“In my opinion, this combination of speculative investment, export-oriented potential, and potential to grow under reasonably poorer conditions, produced a very huge issue,” leading to “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 discovered that land-use change for jatropha in countries 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 2 and 14 years, and “in some situations, the carbon financial obligation might never ever be recovered.” In India, production showed carbon advantages, but making use of fertilizers resulted in boosts of soil and water “acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication.”

“If you look at the majority of the plantations in Ghana, they claim that the jatropha produced was situated on minimal land, however the concept of minimal land is really elusive,” discusses 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 discovered that a lax definition of “marginal” indicated that presumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had been lying untouched and unused was typically illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The truth that … currently no one is using [land] for farming does not indicate that no one is using it [for other functions] There are a great deal 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 gained from the experience with jatropha, say experts, which need to be heeded when considering other advantageous second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in financial investment], but unfortunately not of research study, and action was taken based upon supposed benefits 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 published a paper mentioning crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he discusses, there was a lack of knowledge about the plant itself and its needs. This vital requirement for in advance research might be used to other possible biofuel crops, he states. In 2015, for instance, his group launched a paper analyzing the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a “fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree species” with biofuel promise.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on abject 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 considerable and steady source of biofuel feedstock due to continuing understanding spaces.” Use of such cautionary information could avoid inefficient financial speculation and careless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

“There are other very appealing trees or plants that could function as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer,” Muys states. “We desired to prevent [them going] in the exact same direction of premature hype and stop working, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos highlights vital requirements that should be satisfied before moving ahead with new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields understood, and a ready market needs to be offered.

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

How biofuel lands are acquired is also key, says Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were purchased for production, authorities need to ensure that “guidelines are put in place to check how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to reduce a few of the issues we observed.”

A jatropha return?

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

“I believe jatropha has some prospective, but it requires to be the best 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 way that Qatar might decrease airline carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its use as a jet fuel might lead to about a 40% decrease of “cradle to tomb” emissions.

Alherbawi’s team is carrying out continuous field research studies to boost jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added benefit, he envisages a jatropha green belt spanning 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The application of the green belt can truly boost the soil and agricultural lands, and secure them versus any additional deterioration triggered by dust storms,” he says.

But the Qatar job’s success still depends upon numerous factors, not least the ability to get quality yields from the tree. Another crucial step, Alherbawi discusses, is scaling up production technology that uses the whole of the jatropha fruit to increase processing performance.

Back in Ghana, jOil is presently 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 study and advancement have resulted in varieties of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were doing not have more than a decade ago.

“We had the ability to accelerate the yield cycle, enhance the yield range and improve the fruit-bearing capacity of the tree,” Subramanian says. In essence, he states, the tree is now domesticated. “Our very 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 might be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal replacement (crucial 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 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 complete jatropha life-cycle evaluation has yet to be finished, but he believes that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions related to the oily plant will be “competitive … These 2 aspects – that it is technically suitable, and the carbon sequestration – makes it a very strong candidate for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he states. “We believe any such expansion will happen, [by clarifying] the definition of degraded land, [allowing] no competition with food crops, nor in any way endangering food security of any country.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can genuinely be carbon neutral, eco-friendly and socially responsible depends on complicated factors, including where and how it’s grown – whether, for instance, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, say experts. Then there’s the unpleasant issue of attaining high yields.

Earlier this year, the Bolivian federal government revealed its intention to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a nationwide biofuels press that has actually stirred argument over potential repercussions. The Gran Chaco’s dry forest biome is already in deep problem, having actually been greatly deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.

Many past plantations in Ghana, warns Ahmed, transformed dry savanna woodland, which became problematic for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was typically unfavorable in the majority of the jatropha sites, due to the fact that the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he discusses.

Other scientists chronicle the “capacity of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists remain uncertain of the environmental practicality 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,” 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 performed research study on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega mentions previous land-use issues connected with growth of various 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 developing ecological issues.”

Researchers in Mexico are currently exploring jatropha-based animals feed as an affordable and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses may be well matched to local contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he remains concerned about prospective environmental costs.

He recommends limiting jatropha growth in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it just in truly poor soils in requirement of repair. “Jatropha might be among those plants that can grow in really sterile 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 associated issues are greater than the prospective advantages.”

Jatropha’s international future remains unsure. And its potential as a tool in the fight versus environment change can only be opened, state lots of professionals, by avoiding the litany of difficulties related to its very first boom.

Will jatropha jobs that sputtered to a halt in the early 2000s be fired back up once again? Subramanian thinks its role as a sustainable biofuel is “impending” and that the resurgence is on. “We have strong interest from the energy industry now,” he says, “to team up 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 through Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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

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