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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a "wonder" biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree native to Central America, it was extremely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on abject lands across 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 evasive guarantee of high-yielding jatropha. A return, they state, is reliant on breaking the yield issue and resolving the harmful land-use issues intertwined with its initial failure.
The sole staying large jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated varieties have actually been achieved and a new boom is at hand. But even if this return 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 belonging 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 fell flat.
Now, after years of research and advancement, the sole remaining large plantation focused on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha comeback is on.
"All those business that stopped working, adopted a plug-and-play design of searching for the wild varieties of jatropha. But to advertise it, you need to domesticate it. This belongs of the process that was missed out on [throughout the boom]," jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.
Having gained from the errors of jatropha's past failures, he says the oily plant could yet play a key function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, minimizing transport carbon emissions at the international level. A brand-new boom might bring extra benefits, with jatropha likewise a possible source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.
But some researchers are hesitant, noting that jatropha has actually currently gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach full capacity, then it is vital to gain from previous errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered not only by poor yields, however by land grabbing, deforestation, and social issues in countries where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil operates.
Experts also suggest that jatropha's tale provides lessons for researchers and entrepreneurs exploring appealing brand-new sources for liquid biofuels - which exist aplenty.
Miracle shrub, significant bust
Jatropha's early 21st-century appeal originated from its pledge as a "second-generation" biofuel, which are sourced from yards, trees and other plants not derived from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its multiple purported virtues was an ability to prosper on abject or "marginal" lands; hence, it was declared it would never ever complete 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 seemed amazing; that can grow without too much fertilizer, too numerous pesticides, or excessive need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not take on food because it is toxic."
Governments, worldwide agencies, financiers and business bought into the buzz, releasing 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 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 demands for land would indeed bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, a worldwide review kept in mind that "cultivation surpassed both clinical understanding of the crop's capacity as well as an understanding of how the crop fits into 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, only 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations started to stop working as anticipated yields declined to emerge. Jatropha could grow on abject lands and tolerate drought conditions, as declared, but yields stayed poor.
"In my opinion, this mix of speculative financial investment, export-oriented potential, and prospective to grow under relatively poorer conditions, created a very huge problem," resulting in "ignored yields that were going to be produced," Gasparatos says.
As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were likewise afflicted by environmental, social and financial problems, say professionals. 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 resulted in a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico found the "carbon payback" of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss varied between 2 and 14 years, and "in some circumstances, the carbon debt may never be recovered." In India, production showed carbon advantages, however using fertilizers led to increases of soil and water "acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication."
"If you take a look at the majority of the plantations in Ghana, they claim that the jatropha produced was situated on limited land, but the idea of minimal land is very elusive," discusses Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the implications of jatropha plantations in the country over numerous years, and found that a lax definition of "minimal" meant that assumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had been lying untouched and unused was frequently illusory.
"Marginal to whom?" he asks. "The reality that ... currently no one is using [land] for farming does not suggest that no one is using it [for other functions] There are a lot of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you may not necessarily see from satellite images."
Learning from jatropha
There are essential lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, state experts, which need to be hearkened when considering other auspicious second-generation biofuels.
"There was a boom [in financial investment], however regrettably 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 colleagues released a paper pointing out essential lessons.
Fundamentally, he describes, there was a lack of understanding about the plant itself and its requirements. This important requirement for upfront research might be applied to other possible biofuel crops, he states. Last year, for example, his team launched a paper analyzing the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a "fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree types" with biofuel guarantee.
Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on degraded and minimal land. But Muys's research study 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 gaps." Use of such cautionary data might avoid wasteful financial speculation and reckless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.
"There are other really appealing trees or plants that might act as a fuel or a biomass producer," Muys says. "We wanted to prevent [them going] in the same instructions of early buzz and fail, like jatropha."
Gasparatos underlines vital requirements that must be fulfilled before moving ahead with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be opened, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and a ready market must be available.
"Basically, the crop needs 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 weird."
How biofuel lands are gotten is likewise essential, says Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were acquired for production, authorities must guarantee that "standards are put in place to examine how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to decrease some of the problems we observed."
A jatropha comeback?
Despite all these challenges, some researchers still think that under the ideal conditions, jatropha might be an important biofuel solution - particularly for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector "responsible for roughly one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions."
"I think jatropha has some potential, however it needs to be the best product, grown in the right 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 method that Qatar might minimize airline company carbon emissions. According to his quotes, its use as a jet fuel could result in about a 40% decrease of "cradle to grave" emissions.
Alherbawi's team is performing ongoing field research studies to improve jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an included benefit, he envisages a jatropha green belt spanning 20,000 hectares (almost 50,000 acres) in Qatar. "The implementation of the green belt can truly improve the soil and farming lands, and protect them versus any additional degeneration triggered by dust storms," he states.
But the Qatar job's success still depends upon numerous aspects, not least the ability to get quality yields from the tree. Another crucial step, Alherbawi describes, is scaling up production innovation that uses the totality of the jatropha fruit to increase processing efficiency.
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 describes that years of research study and development have actually led to varieties of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were lacking more than a decade back.
"We were able to hasten the yield cycle, improve the yield variety and improve the fruit-bearing capacity of the tree," Subramanian says. 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 byproducts might be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal alternative (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 actually as soon as again reopened with the energy shift drive for oil companies 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 related to the oily plant will be "competitive ... These 2 aspects - that it is technically ideal, and the carbon sequestration - makes it an extremely strong prospect for adoption for ... sustainable air travel," he says. "Our company believe any such growth will occur, [by clarifying] the meaning of degraded land, [enabling] no competitors with food crops, nor in any way threatening food security of any country."
Where next for jatropha?
Whether jatropha can truly be carbon neutral, eco-friendly and socially accountable depends upon complex aspects, consisting of where and how it's grown - whether, for instance, its production model is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, say experts. Then there's the bothersome issue of accomplishing high yields.
Earlier this year, the Bolivian government revealed its intention to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a national biofuels push that has stirred argument over potential consequences. The Gran Chaco's dry forest biome is currently in deep trouble, having been greatly deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.
Many previous plantations in Ghana, alerts Ahmed, converted dry savanna forest, which became bothersome for carbon accounting. "The net carbon was typically negative in many of the jatropha sites, since the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree," he describes.
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 eco-friendly viability of second-generation biofuels. "If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it potentially becomes so successful, that we will have a great deal of associated land-use change," states Daniel Itzamna Avila-Ortega, co-founder of the Mexican Center of Industrial Ecology and a Ph.D. trainee with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has actually performed research study on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.
Avila-Ortega points out previous land-use issues associated with expansion of various crops, consisting of oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: "Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not handle the economic sector doing whatever they desire, in regards to producing ecological issues."
Researchers in Mexico are presently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as an inexpensive and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages might be well matched to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he stays concerned about possible environmental expenses.
He recommends restricting jatropha growth in Mexico to make it a "crop that conquers land," growing it just in genuinely bad soils in requirement of repair. "Jatropha might be among those plants that can grow in really sterile wastelands," he explains. "That's the only way I would ever promote it in Mexico - as part of a forest recovery strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated issues are higher than the possible benefits."
Jatropha's international future stays uncertain. And its possible as a tool in the fight versus climate modification can just be unlocked, 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 "impending" and that the resurgence is on. "We have strong interest from the energy market now," he states, "to collaborate 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 through Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
A liquid biofuels primer: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world impacts
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