Wonder weed plans fail to flourish

Wonder weed plans fail to flourish

The first of four weekly articles on biofuels looks at how investment in
jatropha is slowing, as investors realize that basic research is needed.

Katharine Sanderson

The business of biofuels

The promise of green gold is fading from Jatropha curcus, a shrub that thrives
in arid conditions and whose seeds yield a diesel-like oil. Many had seen it as
a potential saviour for marginal lands, a plant that could lift developing
countries out of poverty and into a sustainable oily future.
Billion-dollar investment plans for large-scale farming of the jatropha biofuel
crop are on hold.Billion-dollar investment plans for large-scale farming of the
jatropha biofuel crop are on hold.K. SIA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Just last year, some analysts were predicting that the area planted with
jatropha worldwide — at the time, 721,000 hectares — would rise as high as 22
million hectares by 2014. The Jatropha Alliance, an advocacy group based in
Berlin, was estimating that investments of up to US$1 billion could be expected
annually. More than 130 companies were in the race, dominated by D1 Oils of
London, which in 2007 had landed a $160-million deal with oil giant BP.

But this July, BP and D1 announced that their deal was off. And of 140
investments made in biofuels so far this year, says analyst Harry Boyle of
London-based New Energy Finance, only four or five have been in jatropha
projects. "Jatropha has gone very quiet," he says.

What happened? It's difficult to untangle the impacts of the global financial
downturn from disappointment with jatropha in particular, says Rob Bailis, an
environmental scientist at Yale University. But "over the past three years, the
investment got way ahead of the plant science", he says.

"Over the past three years, the investment got way ahead of the plant
science."

Early investors are now realizing the plant's limitations. Jatropha can live in
very dry conditions, but doesn't necessarily yield a lot of seeds. The plant
takes three years or more to reach maturity, requiring care along the way. And
jatropha seedlings are often not well-suited to the climate in which they are
planted.

Even supporters acknowledge that the allure of jatropha is fading somewhat.
"This year, a lot of projects did not continue," admits Thilo Zelt, director of
the Jatropha Alliance.

One blow came with the publication of a controversial paper in June, in which a
team led by Arjen Hoekstra at the University of Twente in the Netherlands
suggested that jatropha needs more water than other bioenergy crops, such as
maize (corn), to produce the same amount of oil (W. Gerbens-Leenes et al. Proc.
Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 10219–10223; 2009). Jatropha had nearly four times the
water footprint of sugar-cane ethanol, for instance.

Critics point out what they see as flaws in that analysis, including the fact
that it is difficult to compare jatropha, which is wild, with crops such as
maize that were domesticated for optimal use thousands of years ago. In
addition, the analysis looked at a small number of plantations, all of which had
young trees, which could skew the conclusions, says Bart Muys, a forest
ecologist at the University of Leuven in Belgium. But Hoekstra says that more
thought needs to be given to variables such as where jatropha is planted and how
it is harvested. "Jatropha was the hallelujah crop," he says, but in reality "it
is just another crop with its own characteristics".

The split between D1 Oils and BP has hurt jatropha's reputation as a good
business investment, says Boyle. In a statement, BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams
said that "the decision to pull out of this is purely based on economics and a
decision to focus on key strategic areas", such as sugar-cane ethanol from
Brazil, cellulosic ethanol from the United States and biobutanol. In the
meantime, D1 Oils has shifted from planting jatropha to focusing on basic
research — including starting a breeding programme to develop seeds with high
oil yields, says Henk Joos, the company's head of plant science.

Another company concentrating on basic science is SG Biofuels, based in
Encinitas, California. It has collected samples from jatropha plants growing
wild in different environments and is creating a library of genetic material
from which it intends to develop enhanced seed strains to test, says chief
executive Kirk Haney.

Eventually, jatropha might prove more useful on a local scale. For instance,
Diligent Energy Systems, a company based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, has set
up small-scale operations in Tanzania, where it provides jatropha seeds for
farmers to plant among other crops or on spare land that is unsuitable for food
crops. The farmers are guaranteed a price for the oil seeds they produce, and so
have an incentive to tend the crop and harvest it carefully, says company
founder Ruud van Eck. Some 5,000 farmers are involved, he says, with a total of
3,500 hectares of jatropha planted between them. "The idea is to grow to 10,000
by the end of this year," he says.

In other countries, jatropha has yet to capture local support. In the Lao
People's Democratic Republic, farmers have been bombarded with seeds and
promotional material from companies but received little to no support, says
Jakob Rietzler of the Lao Institute for Renewable Energy in Vientiane. As a
result, he says, the jatropha they planted reached harvest at the same time as
the rice crops. "Farmers neglect their jatropha seeds because they have to
harvest their rice," he says.
More oil per seed is the goal.More oil per seed is the goal.T. SANTIKO
BUDI/JIWAFOTO/ZUMA PRESS

In India, where much of the jatropha hype originated, success will come only if
a conservative, realistic approach is adopted at the beginning, says Pushpito
Ghosh, director of the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute in
Bhavnagar. Biodiesel from his institute's jatropha project (see Nature 449,
652–655; 2007) has been used in test cars belonging to the project and in
collaboration with General Motors. Ghosh's team has been working to improve the
genetic stock of their jatropha, and is about to embark on a life-cycle analysis
of how much biodiesel jatropha can generate from a 50-hectare plot.

Even so, "it would be premature to call [jatropha] a success in India", says
Ghosh. "It is still in the take-off stage."

He sees the hype and subsequent disappointment surrounding jatropha as a
weeding-out process, leaving behind smaller, more professional players. These
include the Australia-based Jatoil, which in August announced a memorandum of
understanding with the European biofuel producer PT Waterland. The deal is
expected to give Jatoil between 1,000 and 2,000 hectares of established
jatropha-bearing land in Java. And China, one of the world's leading biofuel
manufacturers, is also taking an interest in jatropha, with 105,000 hectares
planted in the country by 2008 and a total of 700,000 predicted by 2015.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090916/full/461328a.html