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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 degraded lands across Latin America, Africa and Asia.
A jatropha rush took place, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields led to plantation failures nearly all over. The aftermath of the jatropha crash was polluted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.
Today, some scientists continue pursuing the evasive guarantee of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they say, is dependent on cracking the yield problem and addressing the harmful land-use concerns linked with its initial failure.
The sole remaining big jatropha plantation is in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated varieties have actually been accomplished 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 beginning 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 pledge 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 staying large plantation concentrated on growing jatropha remains in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, claims the jatropha resurgence is on.
"All those business that failed, embraced a plug-and-play model of hunting for the wild varieties of jatropha. But to advertise it, you need to domesticate it. This is a part of the procedure that was missed [during the boom]," jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.
Having gained from the errors of jatropha's previous failures, he states the oily plant might yet play an essential role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, decreasing transportation carbon emissions at the global level. A new boom could bring additional advantages, with jatropha likewise a possible source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.
But some scientists are hesitant, keeping in mind that jatropha has actually already gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They warn that if the plant is to reach complete capacity, then it is vital to gain from past mistakes. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered not only by bad yields, but by land grabbing, logging, and social problems in countries where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil operates.
Experts likewise suggest that jatropha's tale offers lessons for scientists and business owners checking out promising new sources for liquid biofuels - which exist aplenty.
Miracle shrub, major bust
Jatropha's early 21st-century appeal stemmed 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 numerous purported virtues was an ability to prosper on abject or "minimal" lands; hence, it was declared it would never compete 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 miraculous; 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 contend with food due to the fact that it is harmful."
Governments, international agencies, investors and business purchased into the buzz, introducing efforts to plant, or guarantee 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 incredible biofuel tree to fade.
In 2009, a Friends of the Earth report from Eswatini (still understood at the time as Swaziland) alerted that jatropha's high demands for land would undoubtedly bring it into direct dispute with food crops. By 2011, an international review kept in mind that "cultivation outmatched both scientific understanding of the crop's potential as well as an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can grow 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, just 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations began to fail as expected yields refused to materialize. Jatropha could grow on abject lands and endure dry spell conditions, as declared, but yields stayed bad.
"In my opinion, this combination of speculative investment, export-oriented potential, and prospective to grow under fairly poorer conditions, developed a huge issue," leading to "ignored yields that were going to be produced," Gasparatos says.
As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were also plagued by ecological, social and financial difficulties, state experts. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and clearing of natural locations were reported.
Studies discovered that land-use change for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania caused a loss of biodiversity. A study from Mexico discovered the "carbon payback" of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss varied between 2 and 14 years, and "in some scenarios, the carbon financial obligation might never ever be recovered." In India, production revealed carbon benefits, but making use of fertilizers led to boosts of soil and water "acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication."
"If you take a look at many of the plantations in Ghana, they declare that the jatropha produced was located on limited land, but the idea of marginal land is very evasive," describes 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 discovered that a lax definition of "limited" suggested that presumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had been lying unblemished and unused was typically illusory.
"Marginal to whom?" he asks. "The fact that ... currently no one is using [land] for farming does not mean that no one is utilizing it [for other purposes] There are a great deal of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you may not always see from satellite images."
Learning from jatropha
There are essential lessons to be learned from the experience with jatropha, say analysts, which ought to be followed when considering other advantageous second-generation biofuels.
"There was a boom [in investment], but sadly not of research study, and action was taken based on supposed advantages of jatropha," says 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 citing key lessons.
Fundamentally, he discusses, there was an absence of understanding about the plant itself and its requirements. This crucial requirement for in advance research study could be used to other possible biofuel crops, he states. Last year, for instance, his team launched a paper examining 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 limited land. But Muys's research 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 careless land conversion for new biofuels.
"There are other really appealing trees or plants that could work as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer," Muys states. "We wished to avoid [them going] in the same direction of early hype and stop working, like jatropha."
Gasparatos underlines essential requirements that should be met before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be opened, inputs to reach those yields understood, and an all set market should be available.
"Basically, the crop needs to be domesticated, or [scientific understanding] at a level that we know how it is grown," Gasparatos states. Jatropha "was almost undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so weird."
How biofuel lands are acquired is also key, states Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were bought for production, authorities need to make sure that "guidelines are put in location to check how massive land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to decrease some of the issues we observed."
A jatropha comeback?
Despite all these difficulties, some researchers still think that under the best conditions, jatropha might be a valuable biofuel service - particularly for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector "accountable for roughly one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions."
"I think jatropha has some possible, however it requires to be the right product, grown in the best place, and so on," Muys stated.
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 way that Qatar may minimize airline company carbon emissions. According to his price quotes, its usage as a jet fuel might result in about a 40% reduction of "cradle to tomb" emissions.
Alherbawi's group is performing ongoing field studies to improve jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added benefit, he imagines a jatropha green belt spanning 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. "The execution of the green belt can really improve the soil and agricultural lands, and safeguard them versus any additional deterioration triggered by dust storms," he states.
But the Qatar project's success still hinges on numerous factors, not least the ability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another important action, Alherbawi discusses, is scaling up production technology 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 actually resulted in ranges of jatropha that can now attain the high yields that were doing not have more than a decade back.
"We had the ability to speed up the yield cycle, enhance the yield variety and enhance the fruit-bearing capability of the tree," Subramanian says. In essence, he states, the tree is now domesticated. "Our very first task is to expand our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares."
Biofuels aren't the only application JOil is looking at. The fruit and its by-products 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 when 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 completed, however he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions associated with the oily plant will be "competitive ... These 2 elements - that it is technically ideal, and the carbon sequestration - makes it a really strong prospect for adoption for ... sustainable air travel," he states. "Our company believe any such growth will occur, [by clarifying] the definition of degraded land, [permitting] no competition with food crops, nor in any method threatening food security of any nation."
Where next for jatropha?
Whether jatropha can truly be carbon neutral, eco-friendly and socially accountable depends on intricate aspects, including 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 nagging issue of achieving high yields.
Earlier this year, the Bolivian government revealed its intent to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a nationwide biofuels push that has stirred debate over prospective effects. The Gran Chaco's dry forest biome is already in deep difficulty, having been heavily deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.
Many past plantations in Ghana, cautions Ahmed, converted dry savanna woodland, which became troublesome for carbon accounting. "The net carbon was often negative in the majority of the jatropha sites, 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 "potential of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock" in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other researchers remain skeptical of the eco-friendly practicality of second-generation biofuels. "If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it possibly ends up being so effective, that we will have a great deal of associated land-use modification," says 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 carried out research study on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.
Avila-Ortega cites past land-use issues associated with growth of different crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: "Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not cope with the economic sector doing whatever they want, in regards to developing ecological issues."
Researchers in Mexico are currently checking out jatropha-based livestock feed as an affordable and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages may be well fit to local contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he remains worried about prospective ecological costs.
He recommends restricting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a "crop that dominates land," growing it only in truly poor soils in requirement of restoration. "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 healing technique for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated problems are higher than the potential advantages."
Jatropha's worldwide future remains unpredictable. And its possible as a tool in the fight versus environment modification can only be unlocked, state numerous specialists, by preventing the list of problems connected with its very first boom.
Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a halt 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 industry now," he says, "to team up with us to establish 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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