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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 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 almost everywhere. The aftermath of the jatropha crash was tainted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.
Today, some scientists continue pursuing the evasive pledge of high-yielding jatropha curcas. A resurgence, they say, depends on breaking the yield issue and resolving the harmful land-use issues linked with its initial failure.
The sole staying large jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated varieties have actually been achieved and a brand-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 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 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 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 resurgence is on.
"All those companies that stopped working, adopted a plug-and-play design of scouting for the wild varieties of jatropha. But to advertise it, you require to domesticate it. This is a part of the process that was missed [during 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 might yet play a crucial role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, lowering transportation carbon emissions at the worldwide level. A new boom could bring extra advantages, with jatropha likewise a potential source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.
But some researchers are skeptical, keeping in mind that jatropha has actually 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 errors. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were obstructed not only by bad yields, however by land grabbing, logging, and social problems in countries where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil operates.
Experts likewise suggest that jatropha's tale uses lessons for researchers and business owners checking out appealing new sources for liquid biofuels - which exist aplenty.
Miracle shrub, significant bust
Jatropha's early 21st-century appeal came from its guarantee as a "second-generation" biofuel, which are sourced from grasses, trees and other plants not obtained from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its numerous purported virtues was a capability to thrive on abject or "limited" lands; hence, it was claimed it would never take on food crops, so the theory went.
Back then, jatropha ticked all packages, says Alexandros Gasparatos, now at the University of Tokyo's Institute for Future Initiatives. "We had a crop that seemed incredible; that can grow without excessive fertilizer, a lot of pesticides, or too much need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not take on food since it is poisonous."
Governments, worldwide companies, investors and companies purchased into the buzz, releasing 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 research study got ready for WWF.
It didn't take long for the mirage of the miraculous biofuel tree to fade.
In 2009, a Buddies of the Earth report from Eswatini (still known at the time as Swaziland) warned that jatropha's high needs for land would certainly bring it into direct dispute with food crops. By 2011, a worldwide evaluation noted that "cultivation exceeded both scientific understanding of the crop's capacity in addition to an understanding of how the crop suits 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, just 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations began to stop working as expected yields refused to materialize. Jatropha could grow on degraded lands and endure dry spell conditions, as claimed, but yields remained poor.
"In my viewpoint, this mix of speculative financial investment, export-oriented capacity, and possible to grow under relatively poorer conditions, created a very big problem," resulting in "underestimated yields that were going to be produced," Gasparatos states.
As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were likewise pestered by ecological, social and economic difficulties, state experts. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and cleaning of natural areas were reported.
Studies found that land-use change for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania resulted in a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico found the "carbon payback" of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss varied in between 2 and 14 years, and "in some scenarios, the carbon debt might never ever be recuperated." In India, production revealed carbon advantages, but making use of fertilizers led to increases of soil and water "acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication."
"If you look at most of the plantations in Ghana, they claim that the jatropha produced was situated on limited land, however the concept of limited land is very elusive," discusses 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" indicated that presumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying untouched and unused was frequently illusory.
"Marginal to whom?" he asks. "The reality that ... currently nobody is utilizing [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 essential lessons to be learned from the experience with jatropha, say analysts, which should be observed when thinking about other auspicious second-generation biofuels.
"There was a boom [in investment], however unfortunately 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 hype was winding down, Muys and colleagues published a paper mentioning essential lessons.
Fundamentally, he describes, there was an absence of understanding about the plant itself and its needs. This important requirement for upfront research study might be applied to other potential biofuel crops, he says. Last year, for example, his team launched a paper examining the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a "fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree types" with biofuel promise.
Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on abject and limited land. But Muys's research showed yields to be extremely variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that "pongamia still can not be considered a substantial and steady source of biofuel feedstock due to continuing knowledge gaps." Use of such cautionary information could prevent inefficient financial speculation and reckless land conversion for new biofuels.
"There are other very promising trees or plants that could function as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer," Muys states. "We wished to prevent [them going] in the exact same direction of premature hype and stop working, like jatropha."
Gasparatos highlights important requirements that need to be fulfilled before moving ahead with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields understood, and a prepared market should be readily available.
"Basically, the crop requires to be domesticated, or [clinical understanding] at a level that we understand how it is grown," Gasparatos states. Jatropha "was practically undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so strange."
How biofuel lands are obtained is also essential, states Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were bought for production, authorities need to guarantee that "guidelines are put in place to examine how massive land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to reduce a few of the issues we observed."
A jatropha return?
Despite all these difficulties, some researchers still believe that under the ideal conditions, jatropha could be an important biofuel service - particularly for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector "responsible for approximately one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions."
"I believe jatropha has some prospective, however it requires to be the ideal product, grown in the ideal 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 decrease airline company carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its usage as a jet fuel might result in about a 40% decrease of "cradle to tomb" emissions.
Alherbawi's team is performing ongoing field studies to increase jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added advantage, he imagines a jatropha green belt covering 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. "The application of the green belt can actually enhance the soil and farming lands, and secure them versus any more wear and tear brought on by dust storms," he says.
But the Qatar task's success still depends upon lots of elements, not least the ability to get quality yields from the tree. Another important step, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production innovation that utilizes 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 explains that years of research study and advancement have actually led to varieties of jatropha that can now accomplish the high yields that were doing not have more than a decade back.
"We had the ability to quicken the yield cycle, enhance the yield range and improve the fruit-bearing capability of the tree," Subramanian states. In essence, he states, 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 substitute (important 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 when again resumed with the energy transition drive for oil business and bio-refiners - [driven by] the look for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly."
A complete jatropha life-cycle evaluation has yet to be completed, but he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions related to the oily plant will be "competitive ... These 2 elements - that it is technically appropriate, and the carbon sequestration - makes it a really strong candidate for adoption for ... sustainable aviation," he says. "We believe any such expansion will occur, [by clarifying] the meaning of degraded land, [enabling] no competitors with food crops, nor in any method endangering food security of any country."
Where next for jatropha?
Whether jatropha can truly be carbon neutral, eco-friendly and socially accountable depends on intricate elements, consisting of where and how it's grown - whether, for instance, its production model is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, say professionals. Then there's the bothersome problem of achieving high yields.
Earlier this year, the Bolivian government announced its objective to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a national biofuels press that has actually stirred dispute over potential repercussions. The Gran Chaco's dry forest biome is currently in deep difficulty, having actually been heavily deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.
Many previous plantations in Ghana, alerts Ahmed, transformed dry savanna woodland, which became problematic for carbon accounting. "The net carbon was typically unfavorable in most of the jatropha websites, since the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree," he explains.
Other researchers chronicle the "potential of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock" in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists stay uncertain of the ecological viability of second-generation biofuels. "If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it potentially ends up being 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. student with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has performed research study on the possibilities of jatropha adding to a circular economy in Mexico.
Avila-Ortega cites past land-use problems connected with growth of different crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: "Our police is so weak that it can not cope with the economic sector doing whatever they desire, in regards to developing environmental issues."
Researchers in Mexico are currently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses might be well suited to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he stays worried about possible ecological expenses.
He suggests restricting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a "crop that conquers land," growing it just in genuinely poor soils in requirement of remediation. "Jatropha could be among those plants that can grow in really sterile wastelands," he explains. "That's the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico - as part of a forest healing technique for wastelands. Otherwise, the involved problems are greater than the potential benefits."
Jatropha's worldwide future stays unpredictable. And its prospective as a tool in the battle versus climate change can only be unlocked, say many specialists, by preventing the litany of difficulties related to its very first boom.
Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian believes its role as a sustainable biofuel is "imminent" which the resurgence is on. "We have strong interest from the energy market now," he states, "to collaborate with us to establish and expand 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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