Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Path To Redemption

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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a “wonder” 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 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 caused plantation failures nearly 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 comeback, they state, is dependent on breaking the yield problem and attending to the damaging land-use concerns linked with its initial failure.

The sole remaining big plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated ranges have been achieved and a new boom is at hand. But even if this resurgence falters, 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 throughout 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 and advancement, the sole remaining big plantation focused on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, claims the jatropha resurgence is on.

“All those business that failed, embraced a plug-and-play design of scouting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to commercialize it, you need to domesticate it. This is a part of the process 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 past failures, he says the oily plant might yet play a key role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, minimizing transportation carbon emissions at the worldwide level. A brand-new boom could bring fringe benefits, with jatropha also a possible source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are skeptical, noting that jatropha has actually currently gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They warn that if the plant is to reach complete capacity, then it is necessary to gain from past errors. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered 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 also suggest that jatropha’s tale provides lessons for scientists and business owners exploring appealing brand-new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, major bust

Jatropha‘s early 21st-century appeal came from its guarantee as a “second-generation” biofuel, which are sourced from turfs, trees and other plants not stemmed from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its multiple purported virtues was an ability to grow on abject or “marginal” lands; hence, it was declared it would never contend with food crops, so the theory went.

At that time, jatropha ticked all the boxes, 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 excessive fertilizer, too lots of pesticides, or excessive demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not contend with food due to the fact that it is dangerous.”

Governments, global agencies, financiers and business bought into the buzz, releasing initiatives to plant, or guarantee 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 research study got ready for WWF.

It didn’t take wish for the mirage of the amazing 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 needs for land would indeed bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, a worldwide evaluation noted that “growing 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 thrive 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 stop working as expected yields declined to emerge. Jatropha might grow on degraded lands and endure drought conditions, as declared, but yields remained poor.

“In my viewpoint, this combination of speculative investment, export-oriented potential, 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 also afflicted by environmental, social and financial difficulties, state professionals. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and clearing of natural areas were reported.

Studies found that land-use modification for jatropha in nations 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 between two and 14 years, and “in some circumstances, the carbon financial obligation may never be recovered.” In India, production revealed carbon benefits, but making use of fertilizers resulted in boosts 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 limited land, but the concept of limited land is very elusive,” discusses Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the implications of jatropha plantations in the nation over a number of years, and discovered that a lax meaning of “limited” meant that presumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had been lying unblemished and unused was often illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The reality that … currently no one is using [land] for farming does not imply that nobody is using it [for other functions] There are a lot of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you may not necessarily see from satellite images.”

Learning from jatropha

There are key lessons to be learned from the experience with jatropha, state analysts, which must 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 on alleged benefits of jatropha,” states 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 winding down, Muys and coworkers published a paper citing crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he describes, there was an absence of understanding about the plant itself and its requirements. This important requirement for upfront research could be applied to other prospective 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 promise.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on degraded and marginal land. But Muys’s research showed yields to be highly variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that “pongamia still can not be considered a significant and steady source of biofuel feedstock due to continuing understanding gaps.” Use of such cautionary information might avoid wasteful monetary speculation and careless land conversion for new biofuels.

“There are other very appealing 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 stop working, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos underlines crucial requirements that must be satisfied before moving ahead with new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be opened, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and a prepared market should be offered.

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

How biofuel lands are acquired is also key, says Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were purchased for production, authorities should ensure that “standards are put in place to check how massive land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to reduce a few of the issues we observed.”

A jatropha comeback?

Despite all these obstacles, some researchers still think that under the best conditions, jatropha could be an important biofuel option – especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector “accountable for approximately one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I believe jatropha has some possible, however it requires to be the ideal product, grown in the best place, and so on,” Muys said.

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 manner in which Qatar may minimize airline carbon emissions. According to his price quotes, its use as a jet fuel might lead to about a 40% reduction of “cradle to tomb” emissions.

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

But the Qatar task’s success still hinges on lots of factors, not least the ability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another vital action, Alherbawi discusses, is scaling up production innovation that uses the entirety of the jatropha fruit to increase processing efficiency.

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 discusses that years of research and development have resulted in ranges of jatropha that can now attain the high yields that were doing not have more than a decade earlier.

“We had the ability to quicken the yield cycle, enhance the yield range and boost the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian states. In essence, he states, the tree is now domesticated. “Our very first project is to expand our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares.”

Biofuels aren’t the only application JOil is looking at. The fruit and its by-products might 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 perfect biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has actually as soon as 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, but he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions connected to the oily plant will be “competitive … These two elements – that it is technically appropriate, and the carbon sequestration – makes it a very strong prospect for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he says. “We believe any such growth will take place, [by clarifying] the meaning of degraded land, [permitting] no competitors with food crops, nor in any method threatening food security of any country.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can genuinely be carbon neutral, environment-friendly and socially accountable depends on complex factors, consisting of where and how it’s grown – whether, for instance, its production model is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state professionals. Then there’s the unpleasant issue of attaining high yields.

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

Many past plantations in Ghana, cautions Ahmed, converted dry savanna forest, which became troublesome for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was often negative in the majority of the jatropha websites, due to the fact that the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he describes.

Other researchers chronicle the “capacity of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists stay uncertain of the eco-friendly viability of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it perhaps becomes so successful, that we will have a great deal of associated land-use modification,” 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 conducted research on the possibilities of jatropha adding to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega cites past land-use problems connected 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 desire, in regards to developing environmental issues.”

Researchers in Mexico are presently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses might be well matched to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he stays worried about potential environmental costs.

He suggests limiting jatropha growth in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it just in really poor soils in need of restoration. “Jatropha might be among those plants that can grow in extremely sterilized wastelands,” he explains. “That’s the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest recovery strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the involved problems are greater than the prospective benefits.”

Jatropha’s international future remains unsure. And its prospective as a tool in the fight versus climate modification can just be opened, state many professionals, by avoiding the list of troubles 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 “impending” which the comeback is on. “We have strong interest from the energy market now,” he states, “to work together with us to establish 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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