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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a "wonder" biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree belonging to Central America, it was extremely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on degraded lands throughout 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 caused plantation failures nearly everywhere. The after-effects of the jatropha crash was tainted by accusations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon decrease claims.

Today, some researchers continue pursuing the incredibly elusive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A resurgence, they say, depends on splitting the yield problem and attending to the hazardous land-use problems intertwined with its initial failure.

The sole staying big jatropha plantation remains in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated varieties have been attained and a new boom is at hand. But even if this comeback fails, the world's experience of jatropha holds essential 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 promise 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 study and development, the sole remaining large plantation focused on growing jatropha is in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, claims the jatropha return is on.

"All those business that stopped working, embraced a plug-and-play model of hunting for the wild ranges of jatropha. But to commercialize it, you need to domesticate it. This is a part of the procedure that was missed [throughout the boom]," jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian informed Mongabay in an interview.

Having learned from the mistakes of jatropha's previous failures, he states the oily plant could yet play a key role as a liquid biofuel feedstock, reducing transportation carbon emissions at the global level. A brand-new boom could bring extra advantages, with jatropha also a prospective source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some researchers are doubtful, 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 essential to find out from previous errors. During the first boom, jatropha plantations were hampered not just by bad yields, however by land grabbing, deforestation, and social issues in countries where it was planted, consisting of Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts also suggest that jatropha's tale provides lessons for researchers and business owners checking out appealing brand-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 yards, trees and other plants not originated from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its numerous supposed virtues was a capability to grow on degraded or "limited" lands; hence, it was claimed it would never compete 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 seemed 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 take on food due to the fact that it is poisonous."

Governments, international firms, 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 miraculous 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 indeed bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, an international review noted that "growing outpaced both clinical understanding of the crop's potential in addition to an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can thrive 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 expected yields declined to emerge. Jatropha might grow on abject lands and endure drought conditions, as claimed, but yields remained bad.

"In my viewpoint, this mix of speculative financial investment, export-oriented capacity, and potential to grow under reasonably poorer conditions, developed a really huge issue," resulting in "undervalued yields that were going to be produced," Gasparatos says.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were likewise pestered by environmental, social and economic difficulties, say professionals. 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 countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania led to a loss of biodiversity. A research study from Mexico found the "carbon repayment" of jatropha plantations due to associated forest loss varied between 2 and 14 years, and "in some scenarios, the carbon debt may never ever be recovered." In India, production revealed carbon advantages, however making use of fertilizers led to boosts of soil and water "acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication."

"If you look at the majority of the plantations in Ghana, they declare that the jatropha produced was positioned on limited land, but the concept of minimal land is extremely elusive," discusses Abubakari Ahmed, a speaker at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the ramifications of jatropha plantations in the country over several years, and discovered that a lax definition of "marginal" meant 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 fact that ... currently no one is using [land] for farming does not indicate that nobody is utilizing it [for other purposes] There are a great deal of nature-based livelihoods on those landscapes that you may not necessarily see from satellite imagery."

Learning from jatropha

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

"There was a boom [in investment], but 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 buzz was winding down, Muys and associates released a paper pointing out key lessons.

Fundamentally, he discusses, there was a lack of understanding about the plant itself and its needs. This essential requirement for upfront research study could be applied to other possible biofuel crops, he says. Last year, for instance, his team released 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 abject and limited land. But Muys's research study showed yields to be highly variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that "pongamia still can not be thought about a considerable and stable source of biofuel feedstock due to continuing knowledge spaces." Use of such cautionary data might avoid inefficient financial speculation and careless land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

"There are other very promising trees or plants that could function as a fuel or a biomass producer," Muys states. "We wished to avoid [them going] in the exact same instructions of premature hype and fail, like jatropha."

Gasparatos underlines crucial requirements that need to be satisfied before continuing with brand-new biofuel plantations: high yields should be unlocked, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and a prepared market needs to be offered.

"Basically, the crop needs to be domesticated, or [clinical understanding] at a level that we understand how it is grown," Gasparatos says. Jatropha "was almost undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so unusual."

How biofuel lands are gotten is likewise crucial, says Ahmed. Based on experiences in Ghana where communally used lands were acquired for production, authorities should guarantee that "standards are put in place to examine how massive land acquisitions will be done and recorded in order to lower a few of the problems we observed."

A jatropha return?

Despite all these difficulties, some scientists still believe that under the right conditions, jatropha might be a valuable biofuel service - especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transport sector "accountable for approximately one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions."

"I believe jatropha has some potential, 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 manner in which Qatar might reduce airline carbon emissions. According to his price quotes, its usage as a jet fuel could lead to about a 40% decrease of "cradle to grave" emissions.

Alherbawi's group is performing continuous field research studies to boost jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an included advantage, he imagines a jatropha green belt covering 20,000 hectares (nearly 50,000 acres) in Qatar. "The implementation of the green belt can really boost the soil and agricultural lands, and safeguard them against any further degeneration triggered by dust storms," he states.

But the Qatar project's success still depends upon numerous elements, not least the ability to acquire quality yields from the tree. Another crucial step, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production innovation that uses the totality of the jatropha fruit to increase processing efficiency.

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) working with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian describes that years of research study and development have actually led to ranges of jatropha that can now achieve the high yields that were doing not have more than a years 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 specifies, the tree is now domesticated. "Our first project is to expand our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares."

Biofuels aren't the only application JOil is looking at. The fruit and its byproducts might 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 ideal biofuels application, according to Subramanian. "The biofuels story has when again resumed with the energy transition drive for oil companies and bio-refiners - [driven by] the look 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 appropriate, and the carbon sequestration - makes it a very strong prospect for adoption for ... sustainable air travel," he states. "We believe any such expansion will occur, [by clarifying] the definition of degraded land, [permitting] no competitors with food crops, nor in any method endangering food security of any country."

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can genuinely be carbon neutral, environment-friendly and socially responsible depends on complicated elements, including where and how it's grown - whether, for instance, its production model is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, say specialists. Then there's the nagging 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 nationwide biofuels press that has stirred argument over possible 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, warns Ahmed, converted dry savanna forest, which became troublesome for carbon accounting. "The net carbon was typically unfavorable in many 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 explains.

Other researchers chronicle the "potential of Jatropha curcas as an environmentally benign biodiesel feedstock" in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists 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 becomes so effective, that we will have a lot of associated land-use modification," 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 carried out research on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega points out previous land-use problems connected with expansion of different crops, consisting of oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: "Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not handle the personal sector doing whatever they want, in regards to developing ecological problems."

Researchers in Mexico are currently exploring jatropha-based livestock feed as a low-priced and sustainable replacement for grain. Such uses may be well matched to regional contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he stays worried about prospective ecological costs.

He suggests limiting jatropha expansion in Mexico to make it a "crop that conquers land," growing it only in truly poor soils in requirement of remediation. "Jatropha could be among those plants that can grow in really sterile wastelands," he discusses. "That's the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico - as part of a forest healing strategy for wastelands. Otherwise, the involved problems are higher than the prospective advantages."

Jatropha's international future remains uncertain. And its potential as a tool in the fight against climate modification can just be unlocked, state many specialists, by avoiding the litany of troubles related to its first boom.

Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up once again? Subramanian believes its function as a sustainable biofuel is "imminent" and that the comeback is on. "We have strong interest from the energy industry now," he states, "to work together 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 via Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

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

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