Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Course To Redemption

If you liked this story, share it with other individuals.

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 could grow on degraded lands across Latin America, Africa and Asia.

A jatropha rush took place, with more than 900,000 (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields resulted in plantation failures nearly everywhere. The aftermath of the jatropha crash was tainted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.

Today, some researchers continue pursuing the incredibly elusive guarantee of high-yielding jatropha curcas. A return, they say, depends on breaking the yield problem and addressing the hazardous land-use problems linked with its original failure.

The sole staying large jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated ranges have been attained 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 start of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree belonging 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 deteriorated, 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 big plantation focused on growing jatropha curcas remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, claims the jatropha comeback is on.

“All those companies that failed, adopted a plug-and-play design of searching for the wild varieties of jatropha. But to advertise it, you require to domesticate it. This belongs of the procedure that was missed out on [during the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

Having learned from the mistakes of jatropha’s past failures, he states the oily plant could yet play a crucial role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, reducing transport carbon emissions at the international level. A new boom might bring fringe benefits, with jatropha likewise a potential source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some researchers are hesitant, keeping in mind that jatropha has already gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They warn that if the plant is to reach complete capacity, then it is necessary to gain from past errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were hampered not just by bad yields, but by land grabbing, deforestation, and social problems in nations where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts also suggest that jatropha’s tale uses lessons for researchers and business owners exploring promising new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, major bust

Jatropha’s early 21st-century appeal originated from its pledge as a “second-generation” biofuel, which are sourced from grasses, trees and other plants not derived from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its numerous purported virtues was a capability to thrive on abject or “minimal” lands; thus, it was declared it would never complete with food crops, so the theory went.

At that time, jatropha ticked all packages, says 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, too lots of pesticides, or too much need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not contend with food since it is dangerous.”

Governments, global companies, financiers and companies purchased 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 study got ready for WWF.

It didn’t take wish 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 needs for land would indeed bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, an international review noted that “growing exceeded both scientific understanding of the crop’s capacity in addition to an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can thrive 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, only 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations began to stop working as expected yields declined to emerge. Jatropha could grow on abject lands and endure dry spell conditions, as declared, however yields stayed bad.

“In my opinion, this mix of speculative financial investment, export-oriented potential, and possible to grow under fairly poorer conditions, created a very huge problem,” resulting in “undervalued yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos says.

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

Studies found that land-use change for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania led to a loss of biodiversity. A research study from Mexico discovered the “carbon repayment” of jatropha plantations due to associated forest loss varied between two and 14 years, and “in some scenarios, the carbon debt may never be recuperated.” In India, production showed carbon advantages, however the usage of fertilizers resulted in boosts 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 limited land, but the idea of marginal land is really elusive,” explains Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha plantations in the country over numerous years, and discovered that a lax definition of “marginal” suggested that presumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying untouched and unused was often illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The truth that … currently no one is using [land] for farming does not imply that no one is using it [for other purposes] There are a great deal of nature-based livelihoods on those landscapes that you might not necessarily see from satellite images.”

Learning from jatropha

There are crucial lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, say experts, which ought to be observed when considering other auspicious second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in investment], but unfortunately not of research study, and action was taken based upon supposed advantages 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 buzz was winding down, Muys and colleagues published a paper citing essential lessons.

Fundamentally, he discusses, there was a lack of knowledge about the plant itself and its requirements. This crucial requirement for upfront research might be applied to other prospective biofuel crops, he says. Last year, for instance, his team launched a paper examining 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 minimal land. But Muys’s research revealed yields to be extremely variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that “pongamia still can not be considered a considerable and stable source of biofuel feedstock due to persisting understanding gaps.” Use of such cautionary data might avoid wasteful financial speculation and careless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

“There are other extremely appealing trees or plants that might serve as a fuel or a biomass producer,” Muys states. “We wanted to prevent [them going] in the very same instructions of early hype and stop working, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos highlights crucial requirements that need to be met before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields need to 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 says. Jatropha “was almost undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so weird.”

How biofuel lands are gotten is likewise essential, states Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were bought for production, authorities must guarantee that “standards are put in place to inspect how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to minimize some of the problems we observed.”

A jatropha return?

Despite all these difficulties, some scientists still believe that under the best conditions, jatropha could be an important biofuel option – particularly for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector “responsible for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I think jatropha has some prospective, however it needs to be the ideal material, grown in the right location, 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 might decrease airline carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its usage as a jet fuel might lead to about a 40% reduction of “cradle to tomb” emissions.

Alherbawi’s team is carrying out ongoing field studies to enhance jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added benefit, he envisages a jatropha green belt spanning 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The application of the green belt can truly enhance the soil and farming lands, and secure them against any additional degeneration triggered by dust storms,” he says.

But the Qatar task’s success still hinges on lots of elements, not least the capability to get quality yields from the tree. Another important action, Alherbawi describes, is scaling up production innovation that uses the whole 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 describes that years of research study and development have resulted in varieties of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were doing not have more than a decade earlier.

“We were able to speed up the yield cycle, enhance the yield range and enhance the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian states. In essence, he states, the tree is now domesticated. “Our very first project 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 could be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal replacement (crucial 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 actually when again reopened with the energy transition 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 thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions related to the oily plant will be “competitive … These two aspects – that it is technically ideal, and the carbon sequestration – makes it an extremely strong prospect for adoption for … sustainable air travel,” he states. “Our company believe any such growth will happen, [by clarifying] the definition of degraded land, [permitting] no competitors with food crops, nor in any method threatening food security of any nation.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can truly be carbon neutral, environment-friendly and socially responsible depends on complex aspects, consisting of 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 bothersome issue of achieving high yields.

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

Many previous plantations in Ghana, warns Ahmed, transformed dry savanna forest, which became problematic for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was typically negative in the majority of the jatropha websites, due to the fact that 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 researchers remain uncertain of the ecological practicality of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it potentially ends up being so successful, that we will have a lot of associated land-use change,” 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 carried out research on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega mentions previous land-use problems associated with expansion of numerous crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our police is so weak that it can not deal with 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 inexpensive and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses may be well matched to local contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he remains concerned about prospective environmental expenses.

He suggests limiting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it just in really bad soils in requirement of repair. “Jatropha might be among those plants that can grow in extremely sterilized wastelands,” he discusses. “That’s the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest recovery technique for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated issues are greater than the potential advantages.”

Jatropha’s global future remains uncertain. And its prospective as a tool in the battle versus environment modification can only be opened, say lots of experts, by preventing the list of problems connected with its very first boom.

Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up once again? Subramanian thinks its role as a sustainable biofuel is “imminent” which the resurgence is on. “We have strong interest from the energy industry 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 via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

A liquid biofuels guide: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world effects

Citations:

Wahl, N., Hildebrandt, T., Moser, C., Lüdeke-Freund, F., Averdunk, K., Bailis, R., … Zelt, T. (2012 ). Insights into jatropha curcas jobs worldwide – Key facts & figures from a worldwide study. Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM), Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. doi:10.2139/ ssrn.2254823

Romijn, H., Heijnen, S., Colthoff, J. R., De Jong, B., & Van Eijck, J. (2014 ). Economic and social sustainability performance of jatropha projects: Arise from field studies in Mozambique, Tanzania and Mali. Sustainability, 6( 9 ), 6203-6235. doi:10.3390/ su6096203

Trebbin, A. (2021 ). Land grabbing and jatropha in India: An analysis of ‘hyped’ discourse on the topic. Land, 10( 10 ), 1063. doi:10.3390/ land10101063

Van Eijck, J., Romijn, H., Balkema, A., & Faaij, A. (2014 ). Global experience with jatropha growing for bioenergy: An evaluation of socio-economic and ecological elements. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 32, 869-889. doi:10.1016/ j.rser.2014.01.028

Skutsch, M., De los Rios, E., Solis, S., Riegelhaupt, E., Hinojosa, D., Gerfert, S., … Masera, O. (2011 ). Jatropha in Mexico: ecological and social impacts of an incipient biofuel program. Ecology and Society, 16( 4 ). doi:10.5751/ ES-04448-160411

Gmünder, S., Singh, R., Pfister, S., Adheloya, A., & Zah, R. (2012 ). Environmental impacts of Jatropha curcas biodiesel in India. Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology, 2012. doi:10.1155/ 2012/623070

Ahmed, A., Jarzebski, M. P., & Gasparatos, A. (2018 ). Using the ecosystem service technique to identify whether jatropha tasks were found in minimal lands in Ghana: Implications for site selection. Biomass and Bioenergy, 114, 112-124. doi:10.1016/ j.biombioe.2017.07.020

Achten, W. M., Sharma, N., Muys, B., Mathijs, E., & Vantomme, P. (2014 ). Opportunities and restrictions of promoting brand-new tree crops – Lessons found out from jatropha. Sustainability, 6( 6 ), 3213-3231. doi:10.3390/ su6063213

Alherbawi, M., McKay, G., Govindan, R., Haji, M., & Al-Ansari, T. (2022 ). A novel method on the delineation of a multipurpose energy-greenbelt to produce biofuel and battle desertification in dry regions. Journal of Environmental Management, 323, 116223. doi:10.1016/ j.jenvman.2022.116223

Riayatsyah, T. M. I., Sebayang, A. H., Silitonga, A. S., Padli, Y., Fattah, I. M. R., Kusumo, F., … Mahlia, T. M. I. (2022 ). Current development of Jatropha curcas commoditisation as biodiesel feedstock: An extensive evaluation. Frontiers in Energy Research, 9, 1019. doi:10.3389/ fenrg.2021.815416

Mokhtar, E. S., Akhir, N. M., Zaki, N. A. M., Muharam, F. M., Pradhan, B., & Lay, U. S. (2021 ). Land viability for prospective jatropha plantation in Malaysia. IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 620( 1 ), 012002. doi:10.1088/ 1755-1315/620/ 1/012002

Chamola, R., Kumar, N., & Jain, S. (2022 ). jatropha curcas: A sustainable source of transport fuel in India. In Advancement in Materials, Manufacturing and Energy Engineering, Vol. II: Select Proceedings of ICAMME 2021 (pp. 395-408). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. doi:10.1007/ 978-981-16-8341-1_32

Peralta, H., Avila-Ortega, D. I., & García-Flores, J. C. (2022 ). Jatropha farm: A circular economy proposal for the non-toxic physic nut crop in Mexico. Environmental Sciences Proceedings, 15( 1 ), 10. doi:10.3390/ environsciproc2022015010

Hao, M., Qian, Y., Xie, X., Chen, S., Ding, F., & Ma, T. (2022 ). Global limited land availability of Jatropha curcas L.-based biodiesel advancement. Journal of Cleaner Production, 364, 132655. doi:10.1016/ j.jclepro.2022.132655

FEEDBACK: Use this type to send out a message to the author of this post. If you wish to publish a public remark, you can do that at the bottom of the page.