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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 abject lands throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia.

A jatropha rush took place, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields led to plantation failures almost everywhere. The aftermath of the jatropha crash was tainted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.

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

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

At the start of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree belonging to Central America, was planted across the world. The rush to jatropha was driven by its promise 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 failed.

Now, after years of research and advancement, the sole remaining big plantation concentrated on growing jatropha is in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha resurgence is on.

“All those business that failed, embraced a plug-and-play design of searching for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to commercialize it, you require to domesticate it. This is a part of the process that was missed out on [during the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

Having discovered from the errors of jatropha’s previous failures, he says the oily plant might yet play a crucial role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, lowering transportation carbon emissions at the global level. A new boom might bring fringe benefits, with jatropha also a potential source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some researchers 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 important to discover from past mistakes. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were obstructed not only by bad yields, but by land grabbing, logging, and social issues in countries where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil operates.

Experts likewise recommend that jatropha’s tale offers lessons for researchers and entrepreneurs exploring 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 an ability to grow on abject or “limited” lands; hence, it was declared it would never compete with food crops, so the theory went.

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

Governments, global companies, investors and companies purchased into the hype, launching initiatives to plant, or promise 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 incredible 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 indeed bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, a worldwide evaluation noted that “growing surpassed both clinical understanding of the crop’s potential along with an understanding of how the crop suits 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 started to stop working as expected yields refused to materialize. Jatropha could grow on degraded lands and endure dry spell conditions, as declared, but yields remained bad.

“In my viewpoint, this combination of speculative financial investment, export-oriented potential, and prospective to grow under relatively poorer conditions, developed a really big issue,” resulting in “ignored yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos states.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were likewise plagued by ecological, social and economic difficulties, state specialists. 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 repayment” of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss varied between two and 14 years, and “in some situations, the carbon debt may never ever be recuperated.” In India, production revealed carbon benefits, but using fertilizers resulted in increases 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, but the concept of limited land is extremely elusive,” discusses Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha plantations in the nation over several years, and discovered that a lax definition of “limited” suggested 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 reality that … currently nobody is using [land] for farming does not imply that nobody is utilizing it [for other functions] There are a lot of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you may not always see from satellite imagery.”

Learning from jatropha

There are essential lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, say analysts, which should be followed when thinking about other auspicious second-generation biofuels.

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

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

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

“There are other very promising trees or plants that might act as a fuel or a biomass producer,” Muys states. “We wanted to avoid [them going] in the exact same direction of early buzz and fail, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos highlights essential requirements that need to be satisfied before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields must be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields understood, and an all set market must be readily available.

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

How biofuel lands are gotten is likewise essential, states Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were purchased for production, authorities must guarantee that “standards are put in location to check how massive 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 think that under the ideal conditions, jatropha might be a valuable 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, however it requires to be the right material, grown in the ideal place, and so on,” Muys stated.

Mohammad Alherbawi, a postdoctoral research study fellow at Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University, continues holding out hope for jatropha. He sees it as a way that Qatar may reduce airline carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its usage as a jet fuel could lead to about a 40% decrease of “cradle to tomb” emissions.

Alherbawi’s group is carrying out continuous field research studies to boost jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added benefit, he imagines a jatropha green belt covering 20,000 hectares (almost 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The execution of the green belt can actually enhance the soil and farming lands, and secure them against any additional degeneration caused by dust storms,” he states.

But the Qatar task’s success still depends upon many factors, not least the capability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another essential action, Alherbawi discusses, is scaling up production technology that uses the totality of the jatropha fruit to increase processing effectiveness.

Back in Ghana, jOil is currently handling 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 development have actually led to ranges of jatropha that can now accomplish the high yields that were doing not have more than a years back.

“We were able to accelerate the yield cycle, enhance the yield range and enhance 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 looking at. The fruit and its byproducts could be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal replacement (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 perfect biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has as soon as again reopened with the energy shift drive for oil companies 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 thinks 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 prospect for adoption for … sustainable air travel,” he says. “Our company believe any such expansion will happen, [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 genuinely be carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and socially responsible depends upon intricate aspects, consisting of where and how it’s grown – whether, for example, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state specialists. Then there’s the nagging issue of accomplishing high yields.

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

Many previous plantations in Ghana, alerts Ahmed, converted dry savanna forest, which became problematic for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was frequently unfavorable in the majority of the jatropha sites, since 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 researchers remain uncertain of the ecological practicality of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it perhaps ends up being so effective, that we will have a lot 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 carried out research on the possibilities of jatropha adding to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega points out past land-use issues associated with growth of numerous crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our police is so weak that it can not manage the economic sector doing whatever they desire, in regards to producing ecological problems.”

Researchers in Mexico are currently checking out jatropha-based livestock feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages may be well suited to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he remains worried about possible ecological expenses.

He recommends limiting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it only in genuinely poor soils in requirement of remediation. “Jatropha might be among those plants that can grow in really sterile wastelands,” he discusses. “That’s the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest healing technique for wastelands. Otherwise, the involved problems are greater than the possible benefits.”

Jatropha’s worldwide future stays unpredictable. And its prospective as a tool in the fight against environment change can just be opened, say many specialists, by preventing the litany of problems associated with its first boom.

Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a stop 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 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 primer: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world effects

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