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 native to Central America, it was extremely 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 caused plantation failures almost all over. The after-effects of the jatropha curcas crash was tainted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.

Today, some scientists continue pursuing the incredibly elusive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A resurgence, they state, is dependent on cracking the yield issue and addressing the hazardous land-use problems linked with its original failure.

The sole remaining large jatropha plantation is in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated ranges have been accomplished 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 appealing up-and-coming biofuel.

At the start of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, a simple shrub-like tree native to Central America, was planted throughout 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 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, embraced a plug-and-play design of scouting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to advertise it, you require to domesticate it. This is a part of the process that was missed [throughout the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian informed Mongabay in an interview.

Having learned from the errors of jatropha’s past failures, he states the oily plant could yet play a crucial role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, decreasing transportation carbon emissions at the international level. A brand-new boom could bring additional advantages, with jatropha likewise a possible source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some researchers are doubtful, noting that jatropha has actually already gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach complete potential, then it is vital to learn from past errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered not just by bad yields, however by land grabbing, deforestation, and social problems in countries where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts likewise recommend that jatropha’s tale offers lessons for researchers and business owners checking out promising brand-new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, major bust

Jatropha’s early 21st-century appeal came from its pledge as a “second-generation” biofuel, which are sourced from turfs, trees and other plants not derived from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its several supposed virtues was a capability to prosper on abject or “limited” lands; hence, it was declared it would never contend 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 lots of pesticides, or excessive demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not compete with food since it is dangerous.”

Governments, worldwide firms, financiers and companies purchased into the hype, releasing initiatives to plant, or pledge 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 got ready for WWF.

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

In 2009, a Friends of the Earth report from Eswatini (still known at the time as Swaziland) alerted that jatropha’s high demands for land would undoubtedly bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, a worldwide 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 grow on marginal 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 started to stop working as anticipated yields refused to materialize. Jatropha could grow on degraded lands and tolerate drought conditions, as declared, but yields stayed bad.

“In my opinion, this mix of speculative investment, export-oriented capacity, and possible to grow under reasonably poorer conditions, created a huge issue,” leading to “ignored yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos says.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were also plagued by ecological, social and economic problems, say specialists. 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 countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania led to a loss of biodiversity. A research study from Mexico found the “carbon payback” of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss ranged between 2 and 14 years, and “in some circumstances, the carbon financial obligation may never be recovered.” In India, production revealed carbon advantages, but 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 limited land, but the idea of limited 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 nation over several years, and discovered that a lax meaning of “minimal” meant that presumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had been lying untouched and unused was typically illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The fact that … presently no one is using [land] for farming does not mean that no one is utilizing it [for other functions] There are a lot of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you might not always see from satellite images.”

Learning from jatropha

There are key lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, state experts, which ought to be hearkened when thinking about other auspicious second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in investment], but sadly not of research study, and action was taken based on supposed benefits of jatropha,” says Bart Muys, a teacher in the Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape at the University of Leuven, Belgium. In 2014, as the jatropha buzz was winding down, Muys and coworkers published a paper citing crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he describes, there was a lack of knowledge about the plant itself and its needs. This essential requirement for upfront research could be applied to other possible 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 species” with biofuel guarantee.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on degraded and minimal land. But Muys’s research showed yields to be extremely variable, contrary to other reports. The team 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 might avoid wasteful monetary and reckless land conversion for new biofuels.

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

Gasparatos underlines essential requirements that should be fulfilled before continuing with new biofuel plantations: high yields must be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields understood, and a prepared market should be offered.

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

How biofuel lands are acquired is likewise crucial, says Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were purchased for production, authorities should ensure that “standards are put in location to inspect how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to decrease some of the issues we observed.”

A jatropha resurgence?

Despite all these difficulties, some researchers still believe that under the right conditions, jatropha might be an important biofuel solution – especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transport sector “accountable for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I believe jatropha has some possible, but it requires to be the right product, grown in the ideal place, 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 lower airline carbon emissions. According to his quotes, its usage as a jet fuel could result in about a 40% decrease of “cradle to grave” emissions.

Alherbawi’s group is performing continuous field research studies to boost jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added advantage, he envisages a jatropha green belt spanning 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The execution of the green belt can actually improve the soil and farming lands, and safeguard them against any further deterioration triggered by dust storms,” he says.

But the Qatar task’s success still hinges on numerous aspects, not least the capability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another important step, Alherbawi discusses, is scaling up production innovation that uses the totality 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) working with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian describes that years of research study and advancement have led to varieties of jatropha that can now attain the high yields that were lacking more than a decade back.

“We had the ability to speed up the yield cycle, enhance the yield variety and enhance the fruit-bearing capacity of the tree,” Subramanian says. In essence, he specifies, the tree is now domesticated. “Our first project 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 alternative (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 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 total jatropha life-cycle assessment has yet to be finished, but he believes 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 air travel,” he states. “We think any such growth will happen, [by clarifying] the definition of abject land, [permitting] no competitors with food crops, nor in any way threatening food security of any nation.”

Where next for jatropha?

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

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

Many previous plantations in Ghana, alerts Ahmed, transformed dry savanna woodland, which became bothersome for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was typically 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 discusses.

Other researchers chronicle the “capacity of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other researchers stay 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 effective, that we will have a lot 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 conducted research on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega mentions previous land-use issues connected with growth of different crops, consisting of oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our police is so weak that it can not cope with the personal sector doing whatever they want, in terms of producing ecological problems.”

Researchers in Mexico are currently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses might be well fit to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he stays concerned about prospective environmental expenses.

He recommends restricting jatropha growth in Mexico to make it a “crop that conquers land,” growing it just in truly poor soils in requirement of remediation. “Jatropha might be one of those plants that can grow in really sterilized wastelands,” he describes. “That’s the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest recovery method for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated issues are greater than the prospective advantages.”

Jatropha’s international future stays uncertain. And its possible as a tool in the battle versus environment modification can just be opened, state numerous professionals, by avoiding the litany of difficulties associated with its very first boom.

Will jatropha projects that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up once again? Subramanian thinks its function as a sustainable biofuel is “imminent” and that the comeback is on. “We have strong interest from the energy industry now,” he states, “to collaborate 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).

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

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