An Italian bioenergy consultancy company, Agroils, who is cultivating 10,000 hectares of jatropha in Ghana for the production of biofuels, have announced that they will be looking to expand their test crop in Morocco.According to a number of reports, Agroils is also investing in the cultivation of jatropha in four African countries - Morocco, Ghana, Senegal and Cameroon.
Agroils’ Business Development Manager, Giovanni Venturini Del Greco, said at an energy conference last week, that the company aims at producing 100,000 tonnes of biofuel from the jatropha plant in 2018 in these countries where it works with local farmers.
The project in Morocco is small at the moment - some 200-hectares - in a desert in Morocco
The company started the cultivation in 2008, the report said.
JatrophaJatropha has oil-rich seeds that can be used to produce biodiesel. While its supporters argue it can be grown on semi-arid land and so poses less of a threat to food output than other biofuel feedstocks such as grains and vegetable oils, its opponents argue that investors are taking away productive agriculture land from poor local farmers for the purpose.
As the debate rages on between investors and civil society organizations that see the growing number of investors as a threat to poor farmers, particularly in Ghana, the country has no policy on the cultivation of crops for biofuels – leaving the field further open for more intense debates.
The need for investments in alternative energy sources and growing more food are realities confronting the world, especially in the face of the current energy and food crises, coupled with the global economic downturn. But the debate would continue as regards best practices and lawful acquisitions of and use of land for biofuel crops as against food crops.
Also on the plus side is the fact that jatropha can also be intercropped with other cash crops such as coffee, sugar, fruits and vegetables.
Airlines and Jatropha
On Dec. 30, 2008 Air New Zealand successfully completed a test flight from Auckland using a 50/50 mixture of jatropha oil and Jet A1 in one of the four Rolls-Royce RB211 engines of a 747 jumbo jet. The two-hour test flight could mark another promising step for the airline industry to find cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternatives to fossil fuel. Air New Zealand announced plans to use the new fuel for 10% of its needs by 2013. Jatropha oil costs an estimated $43 a barrel.
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
2 comments:
Great article, Jatropha is an amazing plant no doubt about it.
But the debate as to whether it takes the place of food crops in farms rightly rolls on.
The main problem I see is that many smallholders here (Essaouira region)rely solely on winter rain to grow their annual harvest of wheat - often under olive or argan trees, sewn on the same field year after year using seeds from the improvrished plants. It can be a sad sight. The knowledge of crop rotation has vanished and instead of an input of knowledge it's bags of phosphates instead (only because Morocco mines it, no sign of balancing with nitrogen or potassium).
It's ultimately all about water. Smallholders here only have the winter rain for irrigation so Jatropha would work for them.
The debate rumbles on. Kirsty x
Apart from Jatropha,the best option for Biofuel is Agave a care free growth plant which can be grown in Waste lands in African Region. Also Opuntia for biogas and power generation.
Researchers find that the agave plant will serve as a biofuel crop to produce ethanol.
"Agave has a huge advantage, as it can grow in marginal or desert land, not on arable land," and therefore would not displace food crops, says Oliver Inderwildi, at the University of Oxford.
The majority of ethanol produced in the world is still derived from food crops such as corn and sugarcane. Speculators have argued for years now that using such crops for fuel can drive up the price of food.
Agave, however, can grow on hot dry land with a high-yield and low environmental impact. The researchers proposing the plant’s use have modeled a facility in Jalisco, Mexico, which converts the high sugar content of the plant into ethanol.
Here is an excellent analysis on Agave as a biofuel:
Agave shows potential as biofuel feedstock, Checkbiotech, By Anna Austin, February 11, 2010:
"Mounting interest in agave as a biofuel feedstock could jump-start the Mexican biofuels industry, according to agave expert Arturo Valez Jimenez.
Agave thrives in Mexico and is traditionally used to produce liquors such as tequila. It has a rosette of thick fleshy leaves, each of which usually end in a sharp point with a spiny margin. Commonly mistaken for cacti, the agave plant is actually closely related to the lily and amaryllis families. The plants use water and soil more efficiently than any other plant or tree in the world, Arturo said. "This is a scientific fact—they don't require watering or fertilizing and they can absorb carbon dioxide during the night," he said. The plants annually produce up to 500 metric tons of biomass per hectare, he added.
Agave fibers contain 65 percent to 78 percent cellulose, according to Jimenez. "With new technology, it is possible to breakdown over 90 percent of the cellulose and hemicellulose structures, which will increase ethanol and other liquid biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass drastically," he said.
Agave already appeared to be an interesting bioethanol source due to its high sugar content and its swift growth. For the first time Researchers at the universities of Oxford and Sydney have now conducted the first life-cycle analysis of the energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of agave-derived ethanol and present their promising results in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.
On both life cycle energy and GHG emissions agave scores at least as well as corn, switchgrass and sugarcane, while reaching a similar ethanol output. The big advantages agave has over the before mentioned plants is that it can grow in dry areas and on poor soil, thus practically eliminating their competition with food crops and drastically decreasing their pressure on water resources.
Plants which use crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM), which include the cacti and Agaves, are of particular interest since they can survive for many months without water and when water is available they use it with an efficiency that can be more than 10 times that of other plants, such as maize, sorghum, miscanthus and switchgrass. CAM species include no major current or potential food crops; they have however for centuries been cultivated for alcoholic beverages and low-lignin fibres. They may therefore also be ideal for producing biofuels on land unsuited for food production.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com
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