Poison plant could help to cure the planet
excerpt Ben Macintyre
The jatropha bush seems an unlikely prize in the hunt for alternative
energy, being an ugly, fast-growing and poisonous weed. Hitherto, its
use to humanity has principally been as a remedy for constipation.
Very soon, however, it may be powering your car.
Almost overnight, the unloved Jatropha curcushas become an
agricultural and economic celebrity, with the discovery that it may be
the ideal biofuel crop, an alternative to fossil fuels for a world
dangerously dependent on oil supplies and deeply alarmed by the
effects of global warming.
The hardy jatropha, resilient to pests and resistant to drought,
produces seeds with up to 40 per cent oil content. When the seeds are
crushed, the resulting jatropha oil can be burnt in a standard diesel
car, while the residue can also be processed into biomass to power
electricity plants.
- pause excerpt.
Of course, nearly all parts of plant are posion, and it's banned in Australia
planted around our listers, it would function as well as barbed wire fence.
I wonder if it likes frost ??
Mike.
cntiinued:
The hardy jatropha, resilient to pests and resistant to drought,
produces seeds with up to 40 per cent oil content. When the seeds are
crushed, the resulting jatropha oil can be burnt in a standard diesel
car, while the residue can also be processed into biomass to power
electricity plants.
As the search for alternative energy sources gathers pace and urgency,
the jatropha has provoked something like a gold rush. Last week BP
announced that it was investing almost £32 million in a jatropha joint
venture with the British biofuels company D1 Oils.
Even Bob Geldof has stamped his cachet on jatropha, by becoming a
special adviser to Helius Energy, a British company developing the use
of jatropha as an alternative to fossil fuels. Lex Worrall, its chief
executive, says: ?Every hectare can produce 2.7 tonnes of oil and
about 4 tonnes of biomass. Every 8,000 hectares of the plant can run a
1.5 megawatt station, enough to power 2,500 homes.?
Jatropha grows in tropical and subtropical climates. Whereas other
feed-stocks for biofuel, such as palm oil, rape seed oil or corn for
ethanol, require reasonable soils on which other crops might be grown,
jatropha is a tough survivor prepared to put down roots almost anywhere.
Scientists say that it can grow in the poorest wasteland, generating
topsoil and helping to stall erosion, but also absorbing carbon
dioxide as it grows, thus making it carbon-neutral even when burnt. A
jatropha bush can live for up to 50 years, producing oil in its second
year of growth, and survive up to three years of consecutive drought.
In India about 11 million hectares have been identified as potential
land on which to grow jatropha. The first jatropha-fuelled power
station is expected to begin supplying electricity in Swaziland in
three years. Meanwhile, companies from Europe and India have begun
buying up land in Africa as potential jatropha plantations.
Jatropha plantations have been laid out on either side of the railway
between Bombay and Delhi, and the train is said to run on more than 15
per cent biofuel. Backers say that the plant can produce four times
more fuel per hectare than soya, and ten times more than corn. ?Those
who are working with jatropha,? Sanju Khan, a site manager for D1
Oils, told the BBC, ?are working with the new generation crop,
developing a crop from a wild plant ? which is hugely exciting.?
Jatropha, a native of Central America, was brought to Europe by
Portuguese explorers in the 16th century and has since spread
worldwide, even though, until recently, it had few uses: malaria
treatment, a windbreak for animals, live fencing and candle-mak-ing.
An ingredient in folk remedies around the world, it earned the
nickname ?physic nut?, but its sap is a skin irritant, and ingesting
three untreated seeds can kill a person.
Jatropha has also found a strong supporter in Sir Nicholas Stern, the
government economist who emphasised the dangers of global warming in a
report this year. He recently advised South Africa to ?look for
biofuel technologies that can be grown on marginal land, perhaps
jatropha?.
However, some fear that in areas dependent on subsistence farming it
could force out food crops, increasing the risk of famine.
Some countries are also cautious for other reasons: last year Western
Australia banned the plant as invasive and highly toxic to people and
animals.
Yet a combination of economic, climatic and political factors have
made the search for a more effective biofuel a priority among energy
companies. New regulations in Britain require that biofuels comprise 5
per cent of the transport fuel mix by 2010, and the EU has mandated
that by 2020 all cars must run on 20 per cent biodiesel. Biodiesel
reduces carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 80 per cent compared with
petroleum diesel, according to the US Energy Department.
Under the deal between BP and D1, £80 million will be invested in
jatropha over the next five years, with plantations in India, southern
Africa and SouthEast Asia. There are no exact figures for the amount
of land already under jatropha cultivation, but the area is expanding
fast. China is planning an 80,000-acre plantation in Sichuan, and the
BPD1 team hopes to have a million hectares under cultivation over the
next four years.
Jatropha has long been prized for its medicinal qualities. Now it
might just help to cure the planet.
- D1 Oils, the UK company leading the jatropha revolution, is growing
430,000 acres of the plant to feed its biodiesel operation on Teesside
? 44,000 acres more than three months ago, after a huge planting
programme in India. It has also planted two 1,235-acre trial sites
this year in West Java, Indonesia. If successful, these will become a
25,000-acre plantation. Elloitt Mannis, the chief executive, says that
the aim is to develop energy ?from the earth to the engine?.
Jatropha: costs and benefits
- Jatropha needs at least 600mm (23in) of rain a year to thrive.
However, it can survive three consecutive years of drought by dropping
its leaves
- It is excellent at preventing soil erosion, and the leaves that it
drops act as soil-enriching mulch
- The plant prefers alkaline soils
- The cost of 1,000 jatropha saplings (enough for one acre) in
Pakistan is about £50, or 5p each
- The cost of 1kg of jatropha seeds in India is the equivalent of
about 7p. Each jatropha seedling should be given an area two metres
square.
- 20 per cent of seedlings planted will not survive
- Jatropha seedlings yield seeds in the first year after plantation