Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Path To Redemption

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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a “miracle” biofuel. A simple shrubby tree belonging to Central America, it was hugely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on abject lands across 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 led to plantation failures nearly everywhere. The consequences of the jatropha crash was tainted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.

Today, some scientists continue pursuing the evasive pledge of high-yielding jatropha. A return, they state, is reliant on breaking the yield problem and dealing with the damaging land-use problems intertwined with its original failure.

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

At the beginning of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, a simple shrub-like tree belonging 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 advancement, the sole staying large plantation focused on growing jatropha is in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha resurgence is on.

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

Having gained from the mistakes of jatropha’s past failures, he says the oily plant might yet play a key function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, decreasing transport carbon emissions at the worldwide level. A new boom could bring fringe benefits, with jatropha likewise a possible source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are hesitant, noting that jatropha has actually currently gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach complete potential, then it is necessary to gain from previous mistakes. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered not only by poor yields, however by land grabbing, deforestation, and social problems in countries where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil operates.

Experts likewise suggest that jatropha’s tale provides lessons for researchers and business owners checking out promising 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 yards, trees and other plants not originated from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its multiple supposed virtues was a capability to grow on degraded or “limited” lands; hence, it was claimed it would never ever take on 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 incredible; 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 take on food due to the fact that it is dangerous.”

Governments, international firms, investors and companies bought into the buzz, launching 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 study got ready for WWF.

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

In 2009, a Buddies of the Earth report from (still understood at the time as Swaziland) warned that jatropha’s high demands for land would undoubtedly bring it into direct dispute with food crops. By 2011, an international review kept in mind that “cultivation exceeded both clinical 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 flourish on minimal 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 fail as expected yields declined to materialize. Jatropha could grow on abject lands and endure dry spell conditions, as declared, but yields remained poor.

“In my viewpoint, this mix of speculative financial investment, export-oriented potential, and potential to grow under fairly poorer conditions, created an extremely big problem,” leading to “undervalued yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos states.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were also afflicted by ecological, social and financial difficulties, state specialists. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and cleaning of natural locations were reported.

Studies found that land-use modification for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania led to a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico discovered the “carbon repayment” of jatropha plantations due to associated forest loss ranged in between 2 and 14 years, and “in some scenarios, the carbon debt may never ever be recovered.” In India, production revealed carbon benefits, however making use of fertilizers led to increases of soil and water “acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication.”

“If you look at many of the plantations in Ghana, they declare that the jatropha produced was located on minimal land, however the idea of limited land is extremely evasive,” discusses Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha plantations in the nation over a number of years, and found that a lax meaning of “limited” suggested that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had been lying untouched and unused was frequently illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The fact that … currently no one is utilizing [land] for farming does not indicate that no one is utilizing it [for other purposes] There are a lot of nature-based livelihoods on those landscapes that you may not always see from satellite imagery.”

Learning from jatropha

There are crucial lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, state experts, which ought to be followed when considering other auspicious second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in investment], but regrettably not of research, and action was taken based on 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 hype was unwinding, Muys and colleagues released a paper mentioning crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he discusses, there was a lack of understanding about the plant itself and its needs. This essential requirement for in advance research study might be applied to other possible biofuel crops, he says. In 2015, for example, his team released a paper evaluating the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a “fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree species” with biofuel pledge.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on degraded and minimal land. But Muys’s research revealed yields to be highly variable, contrary to other reports. The team concluded that “pongamia still can not be thought about a significant and steady source of biofuel feedstock due to persisting understanding gaps.” Use of such cautionary data might avoid wasteful monetary speculation and reckless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

“There are other really appealing trees or plants that could serve as a fuel or a biomass producer,” Muys states. “We wished to avoid [them going] in the very same direction of early hype and stop working, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos highlights essential requirements that must be fulfilled before moving ahead with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields should be opened, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and a ready market should be available.

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

How biofuel lands are acquired is likewise crucial, says Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were acquired for production, authorities must make sure that “standards are put in place to examine how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to minimize a few of the issues we observed.”

A jatropha comeback?

Despite all these obstacles, some researchers still believe that under the right conditions, jatropha could be a valuable biofuel service – particularly for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector “responsible for approximately one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I think jatropha has some possible, however it needs to be the ideal material, 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 might minimize airline carbon emissions. According to his quotes, its use as a jet fuel could lead to about a 40% reduction of “cradle to grave” emissions.

Alherbawi’s group is conducting ongoing field studies to improve jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added benefit, he envisages a jatropha green belt spanning 20,000 hectares (almost 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The application of the green belt can actually boost the soil and farming lands, and safeguard them versus any additional degeneration brought on by dust storms,” he states.

But the Qatar project’s success still hinges on numerous factors, not least the ability to get quality yields from the tree. Another essential step, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production innovation that utilizes the whole 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 led to varieties of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were doing not have more than a years ago.

“We had the ability to hasten the yield cycle, improve the yield range and improve the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian states. In essence, he mentions, 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 taking a look at. The fruit and its byproducts might 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 ideal biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has as soon as again reopened with the energy transition drive for oil business and bio-refiners – [driven by] the look for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly.”

A complete jatropha life-cycle evaluation has yet to be completed, however he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions connected to the oily plant will be “competitive … These two elements – 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 take place, [by clarifying] the meaning of degraded land, [permitting] no competitors with food crops, nor in any method endangering food security of any nation.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can truly be carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and socially responsible depends upon complex aspects, consisting of where and how it’s grown – whether, for instance, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, say professionals. Then there’s the irritating problem of attaining high yields.

Earlier this year, the Bolivian government revealed its intent to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a nationwide biofuels push that has stirred dispute over prospective effects. The Gran Chaco’s dry forest biome is already in deep difficulty, having been heavily deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.

Many past plantations in Ghana, warns Ahmed, converted dry savanna forest, which became troublesome for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was often unfavorable in many of the jatropha websites, since the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he discusses.

Other researchers chronicle the “capacity of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other researchers remain uncertain of the eco-friendly 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 great deal 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 conducted research on the possibilities of jatropha adding to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega points out previous land-use problems related to expansion of various crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our police is so weak that it can not cope with the economic sector doing whatever they want, in regards to producing environmental problems.”

Researchers in Mexico are presently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses may be well fit to local contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he remains worried about potential environmental expenses.

He suggests limiting jatropha growth in Mexico to make it a “crop that conquers land,” growing it just in really poor soils in need of restoration. “Jatropha could be among 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 healing method for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated problems are greater than the possible advantages.”

Jatropha’s international future stays unsure. And its potential as a tool in the battle versus climate change can only be unlocked, say lots of specialists, by avoiding the litany of difficulties associated with its very first boom.

Will jatropha jobs that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up once again? Subramanian thinks its function as a sustainable biofuel is “impending” which the resurgence is on. “We have strong interest from the energy market 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 by means of Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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