Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Course 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 hugely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that could grow on abject 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 resulted in plantation failures nearly everywhere. The aftermath 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 promise of high-yielding jatropha. A return, they say, is reliant on breaking the yield problem and resolving the damaging land-use problems linked with its original failure.

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

At the beginning of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, a simple shrub-like tree native to Central America, was planted throughout the world. The rush to jatropha curcas was driven by its guarantee 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 development, the sole staying large plantation focused on growing jatropha is in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, claims the jatropha resurgence is on.

“All those companies that stopped working, embraced a plug-and-play model of scouting for the wild varieties of jatropha. But to commercialize it, you require to domesticate it. This belongs of the procedure 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 says the oily plant might yet play an essential role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, lowering transportation carbon emissions at the worldwide level. A new boom might bring fringe benefits, with jatropha also a potential source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some researchers are skeptical, keeping in mind that jatropha has actually currently 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 past errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were obstructed not just by bad yields, however by land grabbing, deforestation, and social problems in nations where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts also suggest that jatropha’s tale offers lessons for researchers and business owners checking out appealing 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 yards, trees and other plants not stemmed from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its numerous supposed virtues was an ability to grow on abject or “limited” lands; therefore, it was declared it would never compete with food crops, so the theory went.

Back then, jatropha curcas ticked all the boxes, says 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 need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not complete with food since it is dangerous.”

Governments, international firms, investors and business purchased into the hype, releasing efforts to plant, or promise 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 Friends of the Earth report from Eswatini (still understood at the time as Swaziland) warned that jatropha‘s high demands for land would indeed bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, an international review noted that “cultivation exceeded both scientific understanding of the crop’s capacity as well as an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can flourish 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 started to fail as anticipated yields declined to materialize. Jatropha could grow on degraded lands and endure drought conditions, as declared, but yields stayed poor.

“In my opinion, this combination of speculative investment, export-oriented capacity, and potential to grow under reasonably poorer conditions, produced a very big issue,” resulting in “underestimated yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos says.

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

Studies found that land-use modification for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania resulted in a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico discovered the “carbon payback” of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss varied in between two and 14 years, and “in some scenarios, the carbon debt may never be recuperated.” In India, production revealed carbon benefits, however making use of 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 produced was situated on limited land, but the concept of minimal land is extremely evasive,” explains Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the implications of jatropha plantations in the country over numerous years, and found that a lax meaning of “marginal” meant that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying unblemished and unused was frequently illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The truth 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 livelihoods on those landscapes that you might not necessarily see from satellite images.”

Learning from jatropha

There are crucial lessons to be discovered from the experience with jatropha, say experts, which should be heeded when thinking about other auspicious second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in financial investment], however regrettably not of research, and action was taken based on alleged benefits 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 citing crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he explains, there was an absence of knowledge about the plant itself and its requirements. This essential requirement for upfront research study could be applied to other prospective biofuel crops, he states. Last year, for instance, his team launched a paper evaluating the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a “fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree types” with biofuel guarantee.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on abject and limited land. But Muys’s research showed yields to be extremely 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 persisting understanding gaps.” Use of such cautionary data might avoid wasteful financial speculation and careless land conversion for new biofuels.

“There are other very promising trees or plants that could function as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer,” Muys says. “We wanted to prevent [them going] in the very same instructions of early buzz and fail, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos underlines vital requirements that should be met before continuing with new biofuel plantations: high yields must be opened, inputs to reach those yields understood, and an all set market should be offered.

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

How biofuel lands are gotten is likewise essential, states Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were purchased for production, authorities should guarantee that “guidelines are put in place to inspect how massive land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to decrease a few of the issues we observed.”

A jatropha return?

Despite all these obstacles, some scientists still think that under the right conditions, jatropha might be a valuable biofuel solution – particularly for the difficult-to-decarbonize transport sector “responsible for roughly one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I think jatropha has some possible, however it requires 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 method that Qatar might minimize airline carbon emissions. According to his quotes, its use as a jet fuel might lead to about a 40% decrease of “cradle to tomb” 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 spanning 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The implementation of the green belt can actually boost the soil and farming lands, and secure them versus any further deterioration brought on by dust storms,” he says.

But the Qatar task’s success still hinges on numerous elements, not least the ability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another essential step, Alherbawi describes, is scaling up production innovation 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 advancement have actually resulted in ranges of jatropha that can now accomplish the high yields that were lacking more than a decade ago.

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

Biofuels aren’t the only application JOil is taking a look at. The fruit and its byproducts might be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal replacement (essential 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 when again reopened with the energy shift drive for oil business 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 completed, however he believes that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions associated with the oily plant will be “competitive … These 2 elements – that it is technically ideal, and the carbon sequestration – makes it an extremely strong candidate for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he says. “Our company believe any such growth will occur, [by clarifying] the definition of abject land, [permitting] no competition with food crops, nor in any method endangering food security of any country.”

Where next for jatropha?

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

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

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

Other scientists chronicle the “capacity of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other researchers remain doubtful of the environmental practicality of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it potentially ends up being so effective, that we will have a great deal 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 conducted research on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega points out previous land-use problems associated with expansion of various crops, consisting of 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 regards to producing ecological problems.”

Researchers in Mexico are presently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages might be well matched to local contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he remains concerned about possible ecological expenses.

He recommends restricting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it just in truly poor soils in requirement of repair. “Jatropha might be one of those plants that can grow in extremely sterile wastelands,” he explains. “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 greater than the prospective advantages.”

Jatropha’s worldwide future stays unsure. And its prospective as a tool in the fight versus environment change can only be unlocked, state lots of professionals, by avoiding the litany of difficulties related to its first boom.

Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up once again? Subramanian thinks its role as a sustainable biofuel is “impending” which the resurgence is on. “We have strong interest from the energy industry now,” he says, “to work together 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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