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 might grow on degraded lands throughout 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 resulted in plantation failures almost everywhere. The consequences of the jatropha crash was polluted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.

Today, some researchers continue pursuing the incredibly elusive pledge of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they state, is reliant on cracking the yield problem and dealing with the harmful land-use concerns linked with its initial failure.

The sole staying big jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated varieties have been achieved and a brand-new boom is at hand. But even if this return fails, the world’s experience of jatropha holds crucial lessons for any promising up-and-coming biofuel.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree native to Central America, was planted throughout the world. The rush to jatropha was driven by its guarantee 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 fell flat.

Now, after years of research study and advancement, the sole staying big plantation focused on growing jatropha is in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha return is on.

“All those companies that failed, embraced a plug-and-play design of hunting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to commercialize it, you need to domesticate it. This belongs of the procedure that was missed [during the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

Having learned from the errors of jatropha’s previous failures, he says the oily plant might yet play a crucial function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, decreasing transport carbon emissions at the global level. A new boom might bring extra benefits, with jatropha also a possible source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some researchers 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 capacity, then it is essential to gain from past errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were obstructed not only by poor yields, but by land grabbing, logging, 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 researchers and business owners exploring promising brand-new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, major bust

Jatropha’s early 21st-century appeal originated from its guarantee 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 multiple supposed virtues was a capability to flourish on abject or “minimal” lands; therefore, it was declared it would never compete with food crops, so the theory went.

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

Governments, worldwide agencies, investors and companies purchased into the buzz, launching 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 prepared for WWF.

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

In 2009, a Pals of the Earth report from Eswatini (still understood at the time as Swaziland) alerted that jatropha’s high needs for land would indeed bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, a global review kept in mind that “growing surpassed both clinical 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 flourish on limited 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, only 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations started to stop working as expected yields declined to emerge. Jatropha might grow on abject lands and endure drought conditions, as declared, but yields stayed bad.

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

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were likewise plagued by environmental, social and financial 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 change 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 associated forest loss varied between 2 and 14 years, and “in some circumstances, the carbon debt might never ever be recuperated.” In India, production revealed carbon advantages, but making use of fertilizers resulted in increases of soil and water “acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication.”

“If you take a look at most of the plantations in Ghana, they claim that the jatropha produced was positioned on minimal land, however the idea of limited land is extremely evasive,” explains Abubakari Ahmed, a speaker at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the implications of jatropha plantations in the nation over several years, and discovered that a lax meaning of “minimal” meant that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying unblemished and unused was frequently illusory.

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

Learning from jatropha

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

“There was a boom [in financial investment], but regrettably not of research, and action was taken based on supposed 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 unwinding, Muys and colleagues released a paper mentioning key lessons.

Fundamentally, he discusses, there was an absence of understanding about the plant itself and its requirements. This essential requirement for upfront research study 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 species” with biofuel promise.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on abject and limited land. But Muys’s research study revealed yields to be highly variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that “pongamia still can not be considered a significant and stable source of biofuel feedstock due to continuing understanding gaps.” Use of such cautionary information could avoid inefficient financial speculation and reckless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

“There are other really appealing trees or plants that could serve as a fuel or a biomass producer,” Muys says. “We desired to avoid [them going] in the same direction of early hype and stop working, like jatropha.”

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

“Basically, the crop requires to be domesticated, or [clinical 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 obtained is likewise key, says Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were acquired for production, authorities should guarantee that “guidelines are put in place to inspect how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to decrease some of the problems we observed.”

A jatropha comeback?

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

“I believe jatropha has some prospective, however it needs to be the ideal material, grown in the right place, 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 lower airline carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its use as a jet fuel might result in about a 40% reduction of “cradle to tomb” emissions.

Alherbawi’s group is carrying out continuous field studies to enhance jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an included benefit, he imagines a jatropha green belt covering 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The execution of the green belt can actually enhance the soil and farming lands, and secure them against any additional degeneration triggered by dust storms,” he states.

But the Qatar project’s success still depends upon lots of elements, not least the capability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another important action, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production innovation that utilizes the totality 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 explains that years of research study and advancement have actually resulted in varieties of jatropha that can now attain the high yields that were lacking more than a years ago.

“We were able to hasten the yield cycle, improve the yield variety and boost the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian says. In essence, he mentions, the tree is now domesticated. “Our first task 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 alternative (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 perfect biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has once again reopened 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, however he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions associated with the oily plant will be “competitive … These two aspects – 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 happen, [by clarifying] the definition of abject 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, eco-friendly and socially responsible depends on complicated 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 specialists. Then there’s the nagging problem of achieving high yields.

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

Many previous plantations in Ghana, alerts Ahmed, converted dry savanna forest, which ended up being problematic for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was typically negative in most of the jatropha sites, since the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he discusses.

Other researchers chronicle the “potential of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically 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 becomes 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. with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has actually carried out research study on the possibilities of jatropha adding to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega cites previous land-use issues connected with expansion of different crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our police is so weak that it can not manage the private sector doing whatever they desire, in terms of producing ecological problems.”

Researchers in Mexico are presently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as an affordable and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses may be well suited to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he remains concerned about possible ecological costs.

He suggests restricting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it only in genuinely bad soils in need of repair. “Jatropha might be among those plants that can grow in extremely sterile wastelands,” he explains. “That’s the only way I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest healing strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated problems are greater than the prospective benefits.”

Jatropha’s global future remains unsure. And its potential as a tool in the battle versus climate change can only be opened, say lots of specialists, by avoiding the list of problems associated with its very first boom.

Will jatropha jobs that sputtered to a halt in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian believes its role as a sustainable biofuel is “impending” and that the return is on. “We have strong interest from the energy industry now,” he says, “to team up with us to develop and expand the supply chain of jatropha.”

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

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