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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a "miracle" biofuel. A simple 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 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 all over. The after-effects of the jatropha crash was polluted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.
Today, some researchers continue pursuing the evasive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A return, they state, is reliant on cracking the yield issue and attending to the damaging land-use problems intertwined with its initial failure.
The sole remaining big jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner declares high-yield domesticated ranges have actually been achieved and a new boom is at hand. But even if this comeback fails, the world's experience of jatropha holds essential 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 throughout the world. The rush to jatropha was driven by its pledge as a sustainable source of biofuel that could be grown on broken down, 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 large plantation focused on growing jatropha is in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, claims the jatropha comeback is on.
"All those business that failed, embraced a plug-and-play model of scouting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to advertise it, you require to domesticate it. This is a part of the process that was missed out on [during the boom]," jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.
Having gained from the mistakes of jatropha's past failures, he states the oily plant could yet play an essential function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, minimizing transportation carbon emissions at the international level. A new boom could bring additional benefits, with jatropha likewise a possible source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.
But some researchers are hesitant, keeping in mind that jatropha has currently gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They warn that if the plant is to reach complete capacity, then it is vital to learn from previous mistakes. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered not just by bad yields, but by land grabbing, deforestation, and social issues in countries where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil operates.
Experts likewise recommend that jatropha's tale offers lessons for researchers and entrepreneurs checking out appealing new sources for liquid biofuels - which exist aplenty.
Miracle shrub, major bust
Jatropha's early 21st-century appeal came from its promise as a "second-generation" biofuel, which are sourced from turfs, trees and other plants not stemmed from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its several purported virtues was a capability to grow on degraded or "minimal" lands; therefore, it was claimed it would never ever compete with 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 appeared miraculous; that can grow without excessive fertilizer, a lot of pesticides, or excessive demand for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not compete with food since it is dangerous."
Governments, global companies, financiers and business purchased into the hype, releasing efforts to plant, or guarantee to plant, millions of 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 understood at the time as Swaziland) alerted that jatropha's high needs for land would undoubtedly bring it into direct dispute with food crops. By 2011, a worldwide review noted that "cultivation surpassed both scientific understanding of the crop's potential along with an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can grow 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 materialize. Jatropha might grow on abject lands and endure dry spell conditions, as declared, but yields stayed bad.
"In my opinion, this combination of speculative financial investment, export-oriented capacity, and potential 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 afflicted 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 modification 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 associated forest loss varied in between 2 and 14 years, and "in some situations, the carbon debt may never ever be recovered." In India, production showed carbon benefits, however the use of fertilizers led to increases of soil and water "acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication."
"If you look at the majority of the plantations in Ghana, they claim that the jatropha produced was positioned on marginal land, but the concept of marginal land is really elusive," explains Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the implications of jatropha plantations in the country over several years, and found that a lax definition of "minimal" indicated 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 truth that ... currently no one is utilizing [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 may not necessarily see from satellite images."
Learning from jatropha
There are crucial lessons to be found out from the experience with jatropha, say experts, which must be heeded 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 professor in the Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape at the University of Leuven, Belgium. In 2014, as the jatropha hype was unwinding, Muys and associates released a paper citing crucial lessons.
Fundamentally, he explains, there was an absence of understanding about the plant itself and its requirements. This essential requirement for upfront research might be used to other prospective biofuel crops, he says. In 2015, for example, his group released a paper analyzing the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a "fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree species" with biofuel pledge.
Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on degraded and minimal land. But Muys's research study revealed yields to be highly variable, contrary to other reports. The team concluded that "pongamia still can not be considered a considerable and steady source of biofuel feedstock due to persisting understanding gaps." Use of such cautionary data might prevent inefficient monetary speculation and reckless land conversion for new biofuels.
"There are other extremely promising trees or plants that might serve as a fuel or a biomass manufacturer," Muys says. "We wished to prevent [them going] in the exact same direction of premature buzz and stop working, like jatropha."
Gasparatos underlines essential requirements that must be satisfied before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields need to be opened, inputs to reach those yields understood, and a prepared market should be available.
"Basically, the crop needs to be domesticated, or [scientific understanding] at a level that we understand how it is grown," Gasparatos states. Jatropha "was virtually undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so odd."
How biofuel lands are gotten is also essential, states Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were acquired for production, authorities must ensure that "guidelines are put in location to examine how large-scale land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to minimize some of the issues we observed."
A jatropha comeback?
Despite all these challenges, some researchers still believe that under the ideal conditions, jatropha might be an important biofuel option - particularly for the difficult-to-decarbonize transportation sector "accountable for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions."
"I think jatropha has some potential, however it requires to be the ideal material, grown in the best 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 method that Qatar may minimize airline company carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its usage as a jet fuel could result in about a 40% reduction of "cradle to grave" emissions.
Alherbawi's team is carrying out ongoing field research studies to increase jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an included advantage, he imagines a jatropha green belt spanning 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. "The execution of the green belt can actually boost the soil and farming lands, and safeguard them against any additional degeneration triggered by dust storms," he says.
But the Qatar task's success still hinges on lots of aspects, not least the ability to obtain quality yields from the tree. Another crucial step, Alherbawi describes, is scaling up production technology that utilizes the entirety of the jatropha fruit to increase processing performance.
Back in Ghana, jOil is presently 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 and advancement have resulted in ranges of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were lacking more than a years ago.
"We were able to accelerate the yield cycle, enhance the yield range and improve the fruit-bearing capacity 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 might be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal alternative (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 ideal biofuels application, according to Subramanian. "The biofuels story has once 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 finished, however he believes 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 a very strong prospect for adoption for ... sustainable aviation," he states. "Our company believe any such growth will happen, [by clarifying] the meaning of degraded land, [allowing] no competitors with food crops, nor in any method threatening food security of any nation."
Where next for jatropha?
Whether jatropha can genuinely be carbon neutral, environmentally friendly and socially responsible depends upon complicated 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 attaining high yields.
Earlier this year, the Bolivian government revealed its intention to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a nationwide biofuels press that has actually stirred argument over possible effects. The Gran Chaco's dry forest biome is already in deep problem, having been greatly deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.
Many past plantations in Ghana, cautions Ahmed, transformed dry savanna woodland, which ended up being bothersome for carbon accounting. "The net carbon was often negative in the majority of the jatropha sites, because the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree," he describes.
Other researchers chronicle the "potential of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock" in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists stay doubtful of the environmental viability of second-generation biofuels. "If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it perhaps becomes so effective, that we will have a great deal 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 actually conducted research on the possibilities of jatropha adding to a circular economy in Mexico.
Avila-Ortega cites previous land-use problems associated with expansion of different crops, consisting of oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: "Our police is so weak that it can not manage the economic sector doing whatever they desire, in terms of producing environmental problems."
Researchers in Mexico are presently checking out jatropha-based animals feed as a low-cost and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages may be well matched to local contexts, Avila-Ortega concurs, though he stays concerned about prospective ecological expenses.
He recommends restricting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a "crop that conquers land," growing it only in really poor soils in requirement of repair. "Jatropha could be among those plants that can grow in extremely sterilized wastelands," he explains. "That's the only way I would ever promote it in Mexico - as part of a forest healing strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the associated issues are greater than the possible benefits."
Jatropha's worldwide future remains unpredictable. And its potential as a tool in the battle against climate modification can only be unlocked, state lots of professionals, by preventing the list of troubles connected with its first boom.
Will jatropha projects that sputtered to a halt in the early 2000s be fired back up again? Subramanian believes its role as a sustainable biofuel is "impending" which the resurgence is on. "We have strong interest from the energy industry now," he states, "to team up 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).
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