Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Course 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 could grow on degraded lands across Latin America, Africa and Asia.

A jatropha rush occurred, 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 after-effects of the jatropha crash was tainted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.

Today, some researchers continue pursuing the incredibly elusive pledge of high-yielding jatropha. A resurgence, they state, is dependent on splitting the yield issue and resolving the hazardous land-use issues linked with its original failure.

The sole remaining big jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated ranges have been attained and a new boom is at hand. But even if this resurgence falters, the world’s experience of jatropha curcas holds important lessons for any appealing up-and-coming biofuel.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree native to Central America, was planted across the world. The rush to jatropha was driven by its guarantee 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 study and development, the sole staying big plantation focused on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha resurgence is on.

“All those business that failed, adopted a plug-and-play design of hunting for the wild varieties 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 gained from the mistakes of jatropha’s previous failures, he says the oily plant might yet play a key function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, reducing transportation carbon emissions at the international level. A new boom might bring additional advantages, with jatropha also a possible source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are skeptical, keeping in mind that jatropha curcas has already gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach full capacity, then it is vital to find out from past errors. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered not just by bad yields, however by land grabbing, deforestation, and social issues in countries where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil operates.

Experts also recommend that jatropha’s tale provides lessons for researchers and entrepreneurs checking out promising 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 turfs, trees and other plants not originated from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its numerous purported virtues was a capability to flourish on abject or “minimal” lands; thus, it was declared it would never take on food crops, so the theory went.

At that time, 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 miraculous; that can grow without too much fertilizer, a lot of pesticides, or too much need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not complete with food since it is harmful.”

Governments, worldwide companies, investors and business bought into the hype, introducing 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 got ready for WWF.

It didn’t take wish for the mirage of the incredible biofuel tree to fade.

In 2009, a Friends of the Earth report from Eswatini (still known 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 evaluation kept in mind that “cultivation outmatched both scientific understanding of the crop’s potential along with an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can prosper 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, only 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations started to stop working as anticipated yields refused to emerge. Jatropha might grow on degraded lands and tolerate dry spell conditions, as declared, but yields stayed bad.

“In my viewpoint, this mix of speculative financial investment, export-oriented potential, and prospective to grow under fairly poorer conditions, developed a very huge issue,” leading to “underestimated yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos states.

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

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

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

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The reality that … presently nobody is using [land] for farming doesn’t indicate that no one is utilizing it [for other functions] There are a great deal of nature-based livelihoods on those landscapes that you might not necessarily see from satellite imagery.”

Learning from jatropha

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

“There was a boom [in financial investment], however unfortunately not of research study, 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 hype was unwinding, Muys and associates released a paper mentioning crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he discusses, there was a lack of knowledge about the plant itself and its needs. This important requirement for in advance research might be used to other prospective biofuel crops, he says. Last year, for example, his team released a paper analyzing 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 study revealed 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 knowledge gaps.” Use of such cautionary data might avoid wasteful monetary speculation and careless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

“There are other really appealing trees or plants that might function as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer,” Muys states. “We wished to avoid [them going] in the exact same instructions of premature buzz and fail, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos underlines essential requirements that need to be satisfied before continuing with new biofuel plantations: high yields must be opened, inputs to reach those yields understood, and a ready market must be 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 practically undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so weird.”

How biofuel lands are gotten is likewise crucial, says Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were bought for production, authorities must make sure that “guidelines are put in place to examine how massive land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to lower some of the issues we observed.”

A jatropha resurgence?

Despite all these obstacles, some scientists still believe that under the right conditions, jatropha could be an important biofuel solution – especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector “responsible for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I believe jatropha has some possible, however it requires to be the right material, grown in the best location, 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 way that Qatar might minimize airline carbon emissions. According to his quotes, its usage as a jet fuel could lead to about a 40% reduction of “cradle to tomb” emissions.

Alherbawi’s group is performing continuous field research studies to enhance 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 application of the green belt can truly boost the soil and agricultural lands, and secure them against any further wear and tear brought on by dust storms,” he states.

But the Qatar project’s success still depends upon many elements, not least the capability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another vital action, Alherbawi describes, is scaling up production technology that utilizes the whole 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) working with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian explains that years of research and advancement have actually led to ranges of jatropha that can now attain the high yields that were doing not have more than a years ago.

“We were able to speed up the yield cycle, improve the yield range and enhance the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian says. In essence, he mentions, 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 taking a look at. The fruit and its byproducts could be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal replacement (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 actually as soon as again resumed 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 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 a very strong prospect for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he says. “Our company believe any such growth will take location, [by clarifying] the meaning of abject land, [enabling] no competition with food crops, nor in any way endangering food security of any nation.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can really be carbon neutral, eco-friendly and socially responsible depends on complex aspects, including where and how it’s grown – whether, for example, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, say experts. Then there’s the nagging problem of achieving high yields.

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

Many previous plantations in Ghana, cautions Ahmed, transformed dry savanna woodland, which ended up being troublesome for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was often unfavorable in the majority of the jatropha sites, because the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he describes.

Other researchers chronicle the “potential of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists remain uncertain of the environmental viability 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 lot of associated land-use modification,” 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 actually conducted research on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega mentions past land-use problems related to growth of different crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not manage the private sector doing whatever they desire, in terms of developing environmental problems.”

Researchers in Mexico are presently exploring jatropha-based animals feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses might be well matched to local contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he stays concerned about prospective ecological costs.

He suggests limiting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that conquers land,” growing it just in truly poor soils in need of . “Jatropha could be among those plants that can grow in extremely sterilized wastelands,” he describes. “That’s the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest healing technique for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated issues are greater than the potential benefits.”

Jatropha’s worldwide future remains unsure. And its potential as a tool in the fight against climate modification can only be opened, state lots of experts, by avoiding the list of difficulties related to its very first boom.

Will jatropha jobs that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up once again? Subramanian believes its function as a sustainable biofuel is “impending” which the return is on. “We have strong interest from the energy market now,” he says, “to work together 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).

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