Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Path To Redemption

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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a “miracle” biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree native to Central America, it was wildly 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 caused plantation failures nearly everywhere. The consequences of the jatropha crash was polluted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.

Today, some scientists continue pursuing the incredibly elusive guarantee of high-yielding jatropha. A resurgence, they say, is dependent on cracking the yield problem and resolving the hazardous land-use concerns intertwined with its initial failure.

The sole remaining large jatropha plantation remains 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 crucial lessons for any appealing up-and-coming biofuel.

At the start 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 promise as a sustainable source of biofuel that could be grown on deteriorated, unfertile lands so as not to displace food crops. But inflated claims of high yields fell flat.

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

“All those companies that stopped working, adopted a plug-and-play design of hunting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to commercialize it, you require 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 gained from the mistakes of jatropha’s past failures, he states the oily plant could yet play an essential role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, minimizing transport carbon emissions at the worldwide level. A brand-new boom might bring fringe benefits, with jatropha likewise a prospective source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some scientists are doubtful, keeping in mind that jatropha has currently gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach complete capacity, then it is necessary to find out from past errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were obstructed not only by bad yields, however by land grabbing, deforestation, and social problems in nations where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil operates.

Experts likewise suggest that jatropha’s tale offers lessons for researchers and business owners exploring appealing brand-new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, significant 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 derived from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its numerous supposed virtues was a capability to grow on degraded or “marginal” lands; therefore, it was claimed it would never take on 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 too much fertilizer, a lot of pesticides, or excessive demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not complete with food because it is poisonous.”

Governments, worldwide agencies, financiers and business bought into the buzz, introducing efforts 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 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 demands for land would certainly bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, an international evaluation kept in mind that “growing outmatched both scientific understanding of the crop’s capacity along with an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can thrive 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 began to fail as anticipated yields refused to emerge. Jatropha might grow on degraded lands and tolerate drought conditions, as declared, however yields remained poor.

“In my viewpoint, this mix of speculative financial investment, export-oriented potential, and prospective to grow under reasonably poorer conditions, produced an extremely huge problem,” resulting in “undervalued yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos states.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were also plagued by environmental, social and economic difficulties, say specialists. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and cleaning of natural locations were reported.

Studies found that land-use modification 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 plantations due to associated forest loss varied in between two and 14 years, and “in some scenarios, the carbon debt may never be recuperated.” In India, production showed carbon advantages, however making use of fertilizers resulted in boosts of soil and water “acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication.”

“If you look at many of the plantations in Ghana, they claim that the jatropha produced was situated on limited land, but the concept of minimal land is really elusive,” describes Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha plantations in the country over a number of years, and found that a lax meaning of “minimal” meant that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had been lying untouched and unused was typically illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The reality that … currently no one is using [land] for farming doesn’t mean 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 always see from satellite imagery.”

Learning from jatropha

There are crucial lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, state analysts, which ought to be heeded when considering other advantageous second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in financial investment], but sadly not of research study, and action was taken based on alleged 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 winding down, Muys and associates released a paper pointing out crucial lessons.

Fundamentally, he describes, there was an absence of knowledge about the plant itself and its needs. This important requirement for upfront research study could be used to other potential biofuel crops, he states. In 2015, for example, his group released a paper evaluating the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a “fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree types” with biofuel pledge.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on abject and marginal 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 spaces.” Use of such cautionary information could avoid inefficient financial speculation and negligent land conversion for new biofuels.

“There are other extremely promising trees or plants that might function as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer,” Muys says. “We wished to prevent [them going] in the exact same direction of early buzz and stop working, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos highlights crucial requirements that need to be met before continuing with new biofuel plantations: high yields should be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields understood, and a ready 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 states. Jatropha “was almost undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so strange.”

How biofuel lands are acquired is also essential, states Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were purchased for production, authorities must ensure that “guidelines are put in place to inspect how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to decrease some of the problems we observed.”

A jatropha return?

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

“I think jatropha has some possible, however it needs to be the ideal material, grown in the right 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 usage as a jet fuel could lead to about a 40% reduction of “cradle to grave” emissions.

Alherbawi’s group is performing continuous field studies to boost jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an included benefit, he envisages a jatropha green belt covering 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The application of the green belt can actually boost the soil and farming lands, and secure them versus any more degeneration triggered by dust storms,” he says.

But the Qatar task’s success still depends upon numerous aspects, not least the ability to obtain quality yields from the tree. Another essential step, Alherbawi discusses, is scaling up production innovation that utilizes the entirety of the jatropha fruit to increase processing performance.

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 resulted in varieties of jatropha that can now accomplish the high yields that were lacking more than a years ago.

“We had the ability to accelerate the yield cycle, improve the yield range and improve the fruit-bearing capacity of the tree,” Subramanian states. In essence, he mentions, the tree is now domesticated. “Our very first task is to broaden our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares.”

Biofuels aren’t the only application JOil is looking at. The fruit and its byproducts might be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal replacement (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 ideal biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has actually when again resumed with the energy shift 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, however he believes that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions connected to the oily plant will be “competitive … These two elements – that it is technically ideal, and the carbon sequestration – makes it a very strong candidate for adoption for … sustainable air travel,” he states. “We believe any such growth will happen, [by clarifying] the meaning of abject land, [allowing] no competition with food crops, nor in any method endangering food security of any country.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can really be carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and socially accountable depends on intricate elements, including where and how it’s grown – whether, for example, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, say specialists. Then there’s the irritating issue of accomplishing high yields.

Earlier this year, the Bolivian government revealed its intent to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a national biofuels push that has stirred argument over potential repercussions. The Gran Chaco’s dry forest biome is currently in deep trouble, having been heavily deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.

Many past plantations in Ghana, alerts Ahmed, transformed dry savanna woodland, which became troublesome for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was typically unfavorable in the majority of the jatropha sites, because the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he discusses.

Other scientists chronicle the “capacity of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists remain skeptical of the ecological practicality of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it potentially becomes so effective, that we will have a lot of associated land-use change,” 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 carried out research study on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega mentions previous land-use problems connected with expansion of numerous crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not manage the economic sector doing whatever they desire, in terms of producing environmental issues.”

Researchers in Mexico are currently exploring jatropha-based animals feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses might be well suited to local contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he stays concerned about possible ecological expenses.

He recommends restricting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it just in really poor soils in need of remediation. “Jatropha could be among 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 strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated issues are greater than the prospective benefits.”

Jatropha’s worldwide future stays uncertain. And its prospective as a tool in the battle versus environment modification can just be opened, state numerous specialists, by preventing the list of problems connected with its first boom.

Will jatropha projects that sputtered to a halt in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian thinks its role as a sustainable biofuel is “imminent” and that the return is on. “We have strong interest from the energy market now,” he states, “to collaborate 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 by means of Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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