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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 wildly promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on abject lands throughout 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 accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.

Today, some scientists continue pursuing the incredibly elusive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they state, is dependent on breaking the yield issue and dealing with the harmful land-use concerns linked with its original failure.

The sole staying large jatropha plantation is in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated varieties have actually been attained and a new boom is at hand. But even if this comeback falters, the world’s experience of jatropha holds important lessons for any promising up-and-coming .

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 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 resurgence is on.

“All those business that failed, adopted a plug-and-play design of searching for the wild varieties of jatropha. But to advertise 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 informed Mongabay in an interview.

Having found out from the errors of jatropha’s past failures, he says the oily plant could yet play a key function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, decreasing transportation carbon emissions at the worldwide level. A brand-new boom might bring additional advantages, with jatropha likewise a potential source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are hesitant, noting that jatropha has currently gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They warn that if the plant is to reach complete potential, then it is vital to gain from previous mistakes. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were obstructed not only by poor yields, but by land grabbing, deforestation, and social problems in countries where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts also recommend that jatropha’s tale provides lessons for scientists and entrepreneurs exploring 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 lawns, trees and other plants not stemmed from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its several purported virtues was an ability to prosper on abject or “marginal” lands; hence, it was claimed 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 appeared incredible; that can grow without too much fertilizer, too numerous pesticides, or excessive demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not take on food since it is dangerous.”

Governments, worldwide firms, investors and companies bought into the buzz, introducing efforts to plant, or promise 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 prepared 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 understood at the time as Swaziland) warned that jatropha’s high demands for land would indeed bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, an international evaluation kept in mind that “growing outpaced both scientific understanding of the crop’s potential as well as an understanding of how the crop suits existing rural economies and the degree to which it can flourish on limited 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, just 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations began to fail as expected yields refused to emerge. Jatropha might grow on abject lands and tolerate drought conditions, as claimed, but yields stayed bad.

“In my viewpoint, this combination of speculative investment, export-oriented capacity, and potential to grow under reasonably poorer conditions, produced a huge problem,” resulting in “undervalued yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos says.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were likewise pestered by ecological, social and financial difficulties, say specialists. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and cleaning of natural locations were reported.

Studies discovered that land-use modification for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania caused a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico found the “carbon repayment” of jatropha plantations due to associated forest loss ranged between 2 and 14 years, and “in some circumstances, the carbon debt might never be recovered.” In India, production revealed carbon advantages, however the usage of fertilizers led to boosts of soil and water “acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication.”

“If you look at most of the plantations in Ghana, they declare that the jatropha produced was positioned on limited land, however the concept of limited land is really elusive,” explains Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the implications of jatropha plantations in the nation over several years, and found that a lax meaning of “marginal” indicated that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying unblemished and unused was often illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The reality that … presently nobody is using [land] for farming does not imply 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 key lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, state experts, which need to be followed when considering other advantageous second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in investment], but regrettably not of research study, and action was taken based upon alleged benefits 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 associates published a paper citing essential lessons.

Fundamentally, he discusses, there was a lack of understanding about the plant itself and its requirements. This crucial requirement for in advance research study might be applied to other possible biofuel crops, he states. Last year, for instance, his team 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 abject and marginal land. But Muys’s research study showed 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 spaces.” Use of such cautionary data could prevent wasteful financial speculation and reckless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

“There are other very 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 direction of early hype and fail, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos underlines crucial requirements that should be satisfied before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields should be opened, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and a ready market must be available.

“Basically, the crop requires to be domesticated, or [scientific understanding] at a level that we understand how it is grown,” Gasparatos says. Jatropha “was virtually undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so strange.”

How biofuel lands are gotten is likewise key, states Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were acquired for production, authorities must make sure that “standards are put in location to examine how massive land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to reduce a few of the problems we observed.”

A jatropha comeback?

Despite all these difficulties, some researchers still think that under the ideal conditions, jatropha could be a valuable biofuel option – especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector “accountable for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I believe jatropha has some prospective, however it requires to be the right product, grown in the right 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 manner in which Qatar may decrease airline company carbon emissions. According to his price quotes, its usage as a jet fuel could lead to about a 40% reduction of “cradle to tomb” emissions.

Alherbawi’s team is conducting continuous field studies to increase jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an included benefit, he imagines a jatropha green belt spanning 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The implementation of the green belt can really boost the soil and agricultural lands, and protect them versus any further deterioration triggered by dust storms,” he says.

But the Qatar job’s success still depends upon lots of aspects, not least the ability to obtain quality yields from the tree. Another important step, Alherbawi discusses, is scaling up production technology that uses the totality 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 discusses that years of research study and development have actually resulted in varieties of jatropha that can now attain the high yields that were lacking more than a decade back.

“We were able to accelerate the yield cycle, enhance the yield variety and enhance the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian says. In essence, he specifies, 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 taking a look at. The fruit and its by-products could be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal substitute (essential 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 once again reopened with the energy transition 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, but he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions associated with the oily plant will be “competitive … These two elements – that it is technically appropriate, and the carbon sequestration – makes it a very strong candidate for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he states. “We think any such expansion will occur, [by clarifying] the meaning of abject land, [enabling] 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, eco-friendly and socially accountable depends upon complex factors, including 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 bothersome issue of attaining high yields.

Earlier this year, the Bolivian government announced its intention to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a nationwide biofuels push that has stirred debate over possible consequences. The Gran Chaco’s dry forest biome is already in deep problem, having actually been heavily deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.

Many past plantations in Ghana, cautions Ahmed, converted dry savanna woodland, which ended up being bothersome for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was often unfavorable in most of the jatropha sites, because 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 doubtful of the environmental practicality of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it possibly 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. student with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has actually conducted research study on the possibilities of jatropha adding to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega points out past land-use issues associated with growth of various crops, consisting of oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our police is so weak that it can not manage the personal sector doing whatever they desire, in terms of producing ecological problems.”

Researchers in Mexico are currently checking out jatropha-based animals feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages might be well fit to local contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he stays concerned about prospective environmental expenses.

He suggests limiting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it only in genuinely poor soils in need of remediation. “Jatropha might be one of those plants that can grow in very sterilized wastelands,” he discusses. “That’s the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest healing strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated issues are higher than the potential benefits.”

Jatropha’s international future stays unpredictable. And its possible as a tool in the battle versus climate change can only be opened, say numerous experts, by avoiding the litany of troubles associated with its first boom.

Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian thinks its function as a sustainable biofuel is “impending” and that the comeback is on. “We have strong interest from the energy market now,” he states, “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 through Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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

Citations:

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Romijn, H., Heijnen, S., Colthoff, J. R., De Jong, B., & Van Eijck, J. (2014 ). Economic and social sustainability performance of jatropha tasks: Arise from field surveys in Mozambique, Tanzania and Mali. Sustainability, 6( 9 ), 6203-6235. doi:10.3390/ su6096203

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Skutsch, M., De los Rios, E., Solis, S., Riegelhaupt, E., Hinojosa, D., Gerfert, S., … Masera, O. (2011 ). Jatropha in Mexico: ecological and social impacts of an incipient biofuel program. Ecology and Society, 16( 4 ). doi:10.5751/ ES-04448-160411

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Ahmed, A., Jarzebski, M. P., & Gasparatos, A. (2018 ). Using the community service method to determine whether jatropha jobs were located in marginal lands in Ghana: Implications for site selection. Biomass and Bioenergy, 114, 112-124. doi:10.1016/ j.biombioe.2017.07.020

Achten, W. M., Sharma, N., Muys, B., Mathijs, E., & Vantomme, P. (2014 ). Opportunities and restrictions of promoting new tree crops – Lessons discovered from jatropha. Sustainability, 6( 6 ), 3213-3231. doi:10.3390/ su6063213

Alherbawi, M., McKay, G., Govindan, R., Haji, M., & Al-Ansari, T. (2022 ). A novel method on the delineation of a multipurpose energy-greenbelt to produce biofuel and fight desertification in deserts. Journal of Environmental Management, 323, 116223. doi:10.1016/ j.jenvman.2022.116223

Riayatsyah, T. M. I., Sebayang, A. H., Silitonga, A. S., Padli, Y., Fattah, I. M. R., Kusumo, F., … Mahlia, T. M. I. (2022 ). Current progress of Jatropha curcas commoditisation as biodiesel feedstock: A detailed evaluation. Frontiers in Energy Research, 9, 1019. doi:10.3389/ fenrg.2021.815416

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