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 native to Central America, it was extremely 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 all over. The aftermath of the jatropha crash was polluted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.

Today, some scientists continue pursuing the incredibly elusive pledge of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they state, is reliant on splitting the yield problem and resolving the damaging land-use concerns linked with its original failure.

The sole staying big jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated varieties have been attained and a brand-new boom is at hand. But even if this return fails, the world’s experience of jatropha holds essential lessons for any promising 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 pledge as a sustainable source of biofuel that might be grown on degraded, 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 staying big plantation concentrated on growing jatropha is in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, claims the jatropha resurgence is on.

“All those business that failed, adopted a plug-and-play model of scouting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to commercialize it, you need to domesticate it. This belongs of the procedure that was missed out on [throughout the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian informed Mongabay in an interview.

Having gained from the errors of jatropha’s previous failures, he states the oily plant could yet play a crucial role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, minimizing transportation carbon emissions at the worldwide level. A brand-new boom could bring additional benefits, with jatropha also a potential source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are skeptical, keeping in mind that jatropha has actually already gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They warn that if the plant is to reach complete potential, then it is necessary to find out from past errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered not only by bad yields, but by land grabbing, deforestation, and social problems in countries where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts likewise recommend that jatropha’s tale provides lessons for scientists and business owners exploring promising brand-new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, significant bust

Jatropha’s early 21st-century appeal stemmed from its guarantee as a “second-generation” biofuel, which are sourced from turfs, trees and other plants not obtained 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; hence, it was claimed it would never ever contend with food crops, so the theory went.

At that time, jatropha ticked all packages, states Alexandros Gasparatos, now at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Future Initiatives. “We had a crop that seemed miraculous; that can grow without too much fertilizer, too numerous pesticides, or too much demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not contend with food because it is dangerous.”

Governments, global firms, investors and companies bought into the buzz, releasing efforts to plant, or promise to plant, millions of hectares of jatropha. By 2008, plantations covered some 900,000 (2.2 million acres) in Latin America, Africa and Asia, according to a market research study got ready for WWF.

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

In 2009, a Pals of the Earth report from Eswatini (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, a global evaluation noted that “cultivation outmatched 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 prosper on limited 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 expected yields declined to emerge. Jatropha might grow on abject lands and tolerate drought conditions, as claimed, but yields stayed poor.

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

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were also pestered by ecological, social and financial difficulties, say 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 countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania caused a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico discovered the “carbon payback” of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss varied in between 2 and 14 years, and “in some scenarios, the carbon debt might never ever be recuperated.” In India, production showed carbon benefits, but the 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 positioned on limited land, however the idea of minimal land is really evasive,” explains Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha plantations in the country over several years, and found that a lax definition of “marginal” indicated 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 reality that … currently nobody is utilizing [land] for farming doesn’t suggest that nobody is using it [for other functions] There are a lot of nature-based livelihoods on those landscapes that you may not necessarily see from satellite images.”

Learning from jatropha

There are essential lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, say experts, which should be hearkened when considering other advantageous second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in financial investment], however unfortunately not of research study, and action was taken based upon alleged benefits of jatropha,” states 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 essential lessons.

Fundamentally, he explains, there was an absence of understanding about the plant itself and its requirements. This essential requirement for in advance research could be applied to other possible biofuel crops, he says. In 2015, for example, his group released a paper evaluating the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a “fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree species” with biofuel guarantee.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on degraded and limited land. But Muys’s research revealed 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 continuing knowledge spaces.” Use of such cautionary data could avoid inefficient financial speculation and negligent land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

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

Gasparatos underlines essential requirements that need to be met before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and a ready market needs to be available.

“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 unusual.”

How biofuel lands are acquired is likewise essential, says Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were purchased for production, authorities must ensure that “standards are put in location to examine 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 challenges, some scientists still believe that under the right conditions, jatropha could be an important biofuel service – especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transport sector “accountable for roughly one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I think jatropha has some potential, however it requires to be the right product, grown in the best 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 may decrease airline carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its usage as a jet fuel could result in about a 40% decrease of “cradle to grave” emissions.

Alherbawi’s team is carrying out continuous field studies to improve jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added advantage, he imagines a jatropha green belt covering 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The implementation of the green belt can truly boost the soil and agricultural lands, and safeguard them versus any more degeneration triggered by dust storms,” he states.

But the Qatar task’s success still depends upon many factors, not least the capability to get quality yields from the tree. Another crucial action, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production innovation 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 describes that years of research and development have resulted in ranges of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were doing not have more than a decade ago.

“We had the ability to speed up the yield cycle, enhance the yield range and boost the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian says. In essence, he specifies, the tree is now domesticated. “Our very first job 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 substitute (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 ideal biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has when 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 complete jatropha life-cycle evaluation has yet to be finished, however he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions connected to the oily plant will be “competitive … These 2 elements – that it is technically appropriate, and the carbon sequestration – makes it a very strong candidate for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he states. “We believe any such expansion will take location, [by clarifying] the definition of abject 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 upon complicated elements, consisting of where and how it’s grown – whether, for example, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state experts. Then there’s the bothersome 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 national biofuels press that has actually 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 previous plantations in Ghana, alerts Ahmed, converted dry savanna forest, which became troublesome for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was frequently unfavorable in the majority of the jatropha websites, since the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he explains.

Other scientists chronicle the “potential of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other researchers remain uncertain of the ecological viability of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it perhaps ends up being so successful, 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 carried out research on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega points out previous land-use problems associated with growth of different crops, consisting of oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our police is so weak that it can not handle the economic sector doing whatever they want, in regards to developing environmental issues.”

Researchers in Mexico are presently exploring jatropha-based animals feed as a low-priced and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages may be well matched to local contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he remains worried about prospective environmental expenses.

He recommends restricting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that conquers land,” growing it just in really bad soils in requirement of repair. “Jatropha might be among those plants that can grow in extremely sterile wastelands,” he discusses. “That’s the only way I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest healing strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated problems are higher than the potential advantages.”

Jatropha’s worldwide future stays unpredictable. And its potential as a tool in the battle versus climate modification can just be opened, state many specialists, by preventing the list of troubles related to its very first boom.

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

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