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 native 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 ensued, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields resulted in plantation failures nearly all over. The after-effects of the jatropha crash was tainted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.

Today, some scientists continue pursuing the evasive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they say, is dependent on cracking the yield issue and attending to the hazardous land-use concerns intertwined with its original failure.

The sole staying big jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated varieties have been accomplished and a new boom is at hand. But even if this return falters, the world’s experience of jatropha holds crucial 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 could 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 remaining big plantation focused on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha comeback is on.

“All those companies that stopped working, 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 procedure that was missed out on [throughout the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

Having gained from the errors of jatropha’s past failures, he says the oily plant might yet play an as a liquid biofuel feedstock, reducing transportation carbon emissions at the global level. A new boom might bring fringe benefits, with jatropha also a possible source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists 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 full potential, then it is vital to gain from past errors. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were hampered not only by poor yields, but by land grabbing, logging, and social issues in countries where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts also recommend that jatropha’s tale provides lessons for scientists and entrepreneurs checking out promising brand-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 derived from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its multiple supposed virtues was an ability to grow on degraded or “marginal” lands; hence, it was declared it would never complete 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 miraculous; that can grow without excessive fertilizer, too many pesticides, or excessive need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not take on food because it is dangerous.”

Governments, worldwide firms, investors and companies bought into the hype, launching initiatives to plant, or guarantee to plant, millions of 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 miraculous biofuel tree to fade.

In 2009, a Friends of the Earth report from Eswatini (still understood at the time as Swaziland) alerted that jatropha’s high needs for land would undoubtedly 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 in addition to an understanding of how the crop suits existing rural economies and the degree to which it can thrive 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 fail as anticipated yields refused to materialize. Jatropha could grow on degraded lands and tolerate dry spell conditions, as claimed, however yields stayed poor.

“In my viewpoint, this combination of speculative investment, export-oriented potential, and prospective to grow under relatively poorer conditions, created an extremely huge issue,” resulting in “underestimated yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos says.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were likewise afflicted by environmental, social and financial troubles, state experts. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and cleaning of natural locations were reported.

Studies discovered that land-use change for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania led to a loss of biodiversity. A research study from Mexico found the “carbon repayment” of jatropha curcas plantations due to associated forest loss ranged in between two and 14 years, and “in some situations, the carbon financial obligation might never ever be recovered.” In India, production showed carbon benefits, but making use of fertilizers led to increases of soil and water “acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication.”

“If you take a look at the majority of the plantations in Ghana, they claim that the jatropha produced was located on minimal land, however the concept of marginal land is very elusive,” discusses 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 definition of “limited” suggested that presumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha curcas plantations had 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 mean that nobody is utilizing it [for other functions] There are a great deal of nature-based livelihoods on those landscapes that you may not always see from satellite images.”

Learning from jatropha

There are key lessons to be discovered from the experience with jatropha, state experts, which must be hearkened when considering other auspicious second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in financial investment], but sadly not of research, and action was taken based upon supposed 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 coworkers released a paper citing key lessons.

Fundamentally, he discusses, there was a lack of knowledge about the plant itself and its requirements. This vital requirement for in advance research could be applied to other potential biofuel crops, he says. In 2015, for instance, his group released 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 degraded and minimal land. But Muys’s research revealed yields to be extremely variable, contrary to other reports. The team concluded that “pongamia still can not be thought about a substantial and steady source of biofuel feedstock due to persisting understanding gaps.” Use of such cautionary information could avoid inefficient financial speculation and reckless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

“There are other really promising trees or plants that might serve as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer,” Muys says. “We wished to avoid [them going] in the very same instructions of early hype and stop working, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos underlines essential requirements that need to be met before moving ahead with new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be opened, inputs to reach those yields understood, and a prepared market needs to be offered.

“Basically, the crop needs 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 strange.”

How biofuel lands are obtained is likewise crucial, says Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were purchased for production, authorities should make sure that “standards are put in location to inspect how massive land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to reduce some of the issues we observed.”

A jatropha resurgence?

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

“I think jatropha has some prospective, but it requires to be the ideal product, 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 manner in which Qatar might reduce airline company carbon emissions. According to his quotes, its use as a jet fuel could lead to about a 40% decrease of “cradle to tomb” emissions.

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

But the Qatar job’s success still depends upon many elements, not least the capability to obtain quality yields from the tree. Another crucial step, Alherbawi discusses, is scaling up production technology that utilizes the whole of the jatropha fruit to increase processing efficiency.

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) dealing with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian explains that years of research study and advancement have led to varieties of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were lacking more than a decade back.

“We had the ability to speed up the yield cycle, improve the yield range and boost the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian says. In essence, he specifies, the tree is now domesticated. “Our 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 by-products might 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 transportation sector that still beckons as the perfect biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has actually when again reopened with the energy shift drive for oil companies and bio-refiners – [driven by] the look for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly.”

A total jatropha life-cycle assessment has yet to be completed, but he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions connected to the oily plant will be “competitive … These 2 elements – that it is technically ideal, and the carbon sequestration – makes it a really strong prospect for adoption for … sustainable air travel,” he says. “Our company believe any such expansion will take location, [by clarifying] the definition of degraded land, [enabling] no competitors with food crops, nor in any method threatening food security of any country.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can truly be carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and socially accountable depends upon complex aspects, including where and how it’s grown – whether, for instance, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, say experts. Then there’s the nagging issue of achieving high yields.

Earlier this year, the Bolivian government revealed its objective to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a nationwide biofuels press that has actually stirred argument over possible 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, cautions Ahmed, transformed dry savanna woodland, which ended up being bothersome for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was often unfavorable in most of the jatropha websites, since the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he describes.

Other scientists 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 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 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. trainee with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has actually conducted research on the possibilities of jatropha adding to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega cites past land-use problems related to growth of various crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not cope with the economic sector doing whatever they desire, in terms of creating environmental problems.”

Researchers in Mexico are currently checking out jatropha-based animals feed as an affordable and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses might be well matched to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he stays worried about possible ecological costs.

He recommends limiting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it only in really bad soils in need of restoration. “Jatropha might be one of those plants that can grow in very 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 problems are greater than the prospective advantages.”

Jatropha’s global future stays uncertain. And its prospective as a tool in the battle versus climate modification can only be unlocked, state many professionals, by avoiding the litany of troubles associated with its very first boom.

Will jatropha jobs that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian thinks its function as a sustainable biofuel is “imminent” which the resurgence is on. “We have strong interest from the energy industry now,” he states, “to work together with us to establish and broaden the supply chain of jatropha curcas.”

Banner image: Jatropha curcas trees in Hawai’i. Image by Forest and Kim Starr through Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

A liquid biofuels primer: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world effects

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