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Dutch study casts doubt on biofuels wonderplant
Is Jatropha a fast-lane to biofuel success, or a dead end on the road to sustainable transport? A new Dutch study has warned that the rush to proclaim jatropha a biofuel ‘wonderplant’ is premature. The biofuel producing benefits of jatropha are still largely untested on the commercial scale.
Businessman getting overexcited at prospects of jathropa plantation
Jatropha, a member of the euphorbia family, has been the focus of huge excitement – and investment – due to its ability to thrive in barren, poor quality soils where no agricultural crops can grow. Bushes live up to 50 years, can withstand droughts and produce (inedible) fruit for 30 years.
Investments
All over the world, energy companies have been investing in growing and processing jatropha. In the past six months alone, ADM, Bayer and Daimler have signed a jatropha research agreement, energy giant BP announced a £32 million jatropha joint venture, Australia’s Mission Biofuels signed a cooperation agreement to produce jatropha in India and the UK’s GEM BioFuels raised £3.5 million (€5 million) to develop its jatropha plantations in Madagascar. And that’s just a selection.
How smart is it to produce jathropa oil on a larger scale than this? (Photo by R. K. Henning / www.jathropa.org)
Warned
One would presume that blue-chip companies like BP, ADM, Bayer and Daimler would have done their research before committing such huge sums to jatropha. But the Dutch study Claims and Facts on Jatropha curcas, by R.E.E. Jongschaap, W.J. Corre, P.S. Bindraban and W.A. Brandenburg, at the University of Wageningen, says otherwise. It concludes that although Jatropha has many positive characteristics that could relate to biofuel production, its capacity for high oil yields is totally unproven:
“As soon as Jatropha curcas is related to high oil yield production, a claim which in itself is not backed up by any scientific findings so far, (especially not on a large scale), a risk warning should be given about the validity of these claims. Especially the claims of low nutrient requirements (soil fertility), low water use, low labour inputs, the non-existence of competition with food production, and tolerance to pests and diseases are definitely not true in combination with high yield oil production.”
So, if the reality of biofuels from jatropha doesn’t match the high expectations, we can’t say we weren’t warned.
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