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Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Course To Redemption
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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a “wonder” biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree belonging to Central America, it was hugely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on degraded 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 allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.
Today, some scientists continue pursuing the incredibly elusive guarantee of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they say, depends on cracking the yield issue and dealing with the hazardous land-use concerns intertwined with its original failure.
The sole staying big jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated ranges have actually been attained and a new boom is at hand. But even if this comeback fails, the world’s experience of jatropha holds essential 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 could 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 development, the sole remaining large plantation concentrated on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha comeback is on.
“All those companies that failed, adopted a plug-and-play model of hunting for the wild varieties of jatropha. But to commercialize it, you require to domesticate it. This belongs of the procedure that was missed [throughout 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 a crucial function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, decreasing transportation carbon emissions at the international level. A new boom might bring extra advantages, with jatropha likewise a prospective source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.
But some researchers are skeptical, keeping in mind that jatropha has already gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach complete potential, then it is necessary to learn from previous errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were obstructed not just by bad yields, but by land grabbing, logging, and social issues in nations where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil operates.
Experts also suggest that jatropha’s tale provides lessons for scientists 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 guarantee as a “second-generation” biofuel, which are sourced from lawns, trees and other plants not stemmed from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its multiple supposed virtues was a capability to flourish on abject or “limited” lands; thus, it was declared it would never take on food crops, so the theory went.
Back then, jatropha ticked all the boxes, states 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 excessive need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not compete with food because it is toxic.”
Governments, worldwide agencies, investors and business bought into the hype, releasing initiatives 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 long for the mirage of the amazing biofuel tree to fade.
In 2009, a Friends of the Earth report from Eswatini (still known at the time as Swaziland) cautioned that jatropha’s high needs for land would undoubtedly bring it into direct dispute with food crops. By 2011, a worldwide evaluation noted that “cultivation outmatched both scientific understanding of the crop’s capacity in addition to 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, only 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations began to stop working as anticipated yields refused to materialize. Jatropha might grow on abject lands and endure dry spell conditions, as claimed, but yields remained bad.
“In my opinion, this mix of speculative financial investment, export-oriented capacity, and potential to grow under relatively poorer conditions, created a huge problem,” resulting in “underestimated yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos states.
As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were likewise pestered by environmental, social and financial problems, say 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 countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania resulted in a loss of biodiversity. A research study from Mexico discovered the “carbon repayment” of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss varied in between two and 14 years, and “in some situations, the carbon financial obligation may never ever be recovered.” In India, production showed carbon advantages, however using fertilizers resulted in boosts of soil and water “acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication.”
“If you take a look at many of the plantations in Ghana, they declare that the jatropha produced was located on limited land, however the idea of marginal land is extremely evasive,” describes Abubakari Ahmed, a speaker at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the implications of jatropha plantations in the country over several years, and discovered that a lax meaning of “marginal” implied that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying untouched and unused was typically illusory.
“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The fact that … presently no one is using [land] for farming does not imply that no one is using it [for other functions] There are a great deal of nature-based livelihoods on those landscapes that you may not necessarily see from satellite imagery.”
Learning from jatropha
There are crucial lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, state analysts, which should be hearkened when thinking about other advantageous second-generation biofuels.
“There was a boom [in financial investment], however unfortunately not of research, and action was taken based upon alleged advantages 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 buzz was unwinding, Muys and coworkers published a paper mentioning essential lessons.
Fundamentally, he explains, there was a lack of knowledge about the plant itself and its requirements. This vital requirement for upfront research could be used to other prospective biofuel crops, he states. Last year, for example, 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 marginal land. But Muys’s research study revealed yields to be highly variable, contrary to other reports. The team concluded that “pongamia still can not be considered a considerable and stable source of biofuel feedstock due to persisting knowledge spaces.” Use of such cautionary data might prevent inefficient financial speculation and reckless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.
“There are other extremely promising trees or plants that could work as a fuel or a biomass producer,” Muys states. “We desired to prevent [them going] in the very same direction of early buzz and fail, like jatropha.”
Gasparatos highlights crucial requirements that should be fulfilled before continuing with new biofuel plantations: high yields must be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields understood, and a prepared market should be offered.
“Basically, the crop requires to be domesticated, or [clinical understanding] at a level that we understand how it is grown,” Gasparatos states. Jatropha “was almost undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so weird.”
How biofuel lands are gotten is also crucial, says Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were bought for production, authorities should ensure that “guidelines 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 challenges, some researchers still believe that under the best conditions, jatropha could be an important biofuel solution – particularly for the difficult-to-decarbonize transport sector “responsible for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”
“I believe jatropha has some potential, but it requires to be the ideal material, grown in the ideal place, 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 method that Qatar might decrease airline carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its use as a jet fuel might lead to about a 40% reduction of “cradle to tomb” emissions.
Alherbawi’s group is performing 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 really improve the soil and farming lands, and protect them versus any more deterioration triggered by dust storms,” he states.
But the Qatar job’s success still depends upon lots of factors, not least the ability 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 performance.
Back in Ghana, jOil is presently handling 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 explains that years of research study and advancement have led to ranges of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were lacking more than a years back.
“We had the ability to speed up the yield cycle, enhance the yield variety and enhance the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian states. In essence, he specifies, the tree is now domesticated. “Our very first task is to broaden our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares.”
Biofuels aren’t the only application JOil is looking at. The fruit and its by-products could 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 transport sector that still beckons as the ideal biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has when again resumed with the energy transition drive for oil business and bio-refiners – [driven by] the look for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly.”
A total jatropha life-cycle evaluation has yet to be finished, however he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions related to the oily plant will be “competitive … These 2 elements – that it is technically suitable, and the carbon sequestration – makes it a really strong prospect for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he says. “We think any such growth will take location, [by clarifying] the definition of degraded land, [permitting] no competitors with food crops, nor in any way threatening food security of any country.”
Where next for jatropha?
Whether jatropha can really be carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and socially accountable depends upon complex elements, 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 accomplishing 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 stirred argument over prospective effects. The Gran Chaco’s dry forest biome is already in deep difficulty, having actually been heavily deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.
Many previous plantations in Ghana, warns Ahmed, transformed dry savanna woodland, which became troublesome for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was typically negative in most of the jatropha websites, because the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he explains.
Other researchers chronicle the “capacity of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists 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 possibly ends up being so successful, 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. student with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has conducted research study on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.
Avila-Ortega points out previous land-use issues related to growth of various crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not deal with the private sector doing whatever they want, in terms of producing environmental problems.”
Researchers in Mexico are presently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages may be well matched to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he remains worried about prospective ecological costs.
He recommends limiting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it only in really poor soils in requirement of remediation. “Jatropha could be among those plants that can grow in very sterilized wastelands,” he explains. “That’s the only way I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest recovery strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated problems are greater than the possible benefits.”
Jatropha’s global future stays unpredictable. And its prospective as a tool in the battle versus climate modification can only be opened, state numerous specialists, by the list of difficulties associated with its very first boom.
Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a halt in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian believes its function as a sustainable biofuel is “imminent” which the resurgence is on. “We have strong interest from the energy market now,” he says, “to collaborate 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 by means of Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
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