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Jatropha's 'fatal flaws'
OMERTA By Butch Del Castillo
BusinessMirror
February 22, 2008
Skyrocketing crude-oil prices have sent the Philippines in a frenetic search for ways to lessen its 98-percent dependence on this imported fossil fuel. The questions are: Have we made any real progress in this quest and, if so, are we on the right track?
The impression we get is that the Department of Energy (DOE) has launched a number of vigorous courses of action for this purpose, one of which is intended to identify and develop indigenous alternative fuels. The search for alternatives has taken the DOE on the trail leading to what it probably considers to be the “most promising” prospect—and that is the commercial development of jatropha as a viable source of oil for refinement into a form of biodiesel.
Jatropha (scientific name jatropha curcas ) refers to a sturdy, free-ranging shrub that Mindanao farmers often grow around vegetable patches to serve as fences, hence the term tubang bakod or tuba-tuba . These small trees (which grow no taller than three meters) are effective as fences because even goats—known to be indiscriminate grazers—won't eat their leaves, which are bitter.
How this nut-producing plant caught the attention of our energy officials is not clear. But it was some years back when then-representative Juan Miguel Zubiri (Bukidnon) was excitedly recommending the commercial use of its oil as a feedstock for biodiesel. Zubiri must have been relying on laboratory findings that one liter of oil could be extracted from three kilos of ripe jatropha nuts. The oil can then be processed or refined into biodiesel fuel.
That was four or five years ago, if I'm not mistaken. Today, the commercial propagation of this plant by the private sector is being encouraged by the DOE through a full-blown program that the Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC) is pushing as lead agency.
The PNOC has a subsidiary called the PNOC-Alternative Fuels Corp. (AFC) which, as early as last year, launched a nationwide information campaign that trumpets the virtues and commercial potentials of this “amazing” energy tree.
(Incidentally, the raw oil from ripe jatropha nuts has also served farm folk well as lamp fuel in areas where electricity is not available.)
Only yesterday, the PNOC announced: “We believe that Mindanao is the best area for the cultivation of jatropha. . . . We foresee that Mindanao will not only be the food basket of the country but will also be the biofuel basket not only of the country but also of Asia as a whole.”
The jatropha production program, now in full gear, calls for the establishment of seed centers in strategic locations. The PNOC-AFC has also established 787 hectares of jatropha plantations in Cagayan de Oro and Nueva Ecija.
Renato Velasco, chairman of the PNOC-AFC, said in his announcement that, “In 2007. . . the company was able to entice investors to pour investment in proposed jatropha plantations and biofuel refineries in the country.” Apparently quite proud of PNOC-AFC's remarkable progress, Velasco added that “no other single local entity can match the efforts of the company in this regard.”
I personally know of at least one sugar-central owner who wants to join the program in a big way. He has done all the preliminary studies and is now quite gung-ho and thinking of sinking in big bucks into a leased 25,000-hectare plantation somewhere in Misamis Oriental.
I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, but I'm afraid I have bad news for both the proponents and those who have been lured into the jatropha program. My intention here, it must be stressed, is not to ridicule but to at least help put things in perspective. I am only passing on the opinions of the experts who have spotted its basic flaws.
This is, in other words, a kind of reality check, which either might help ensure the program's success, or serve as a timely warning to avert a disastrous failure.
According to those who seem to know what jatropha is all about, the PNOC-AFC, before proceeding with the program, might want to look into the following considerations:
Jatropha nuts come in bunches, much like grapes or the local lanzones. For some reason, however, the jatropha fruits in the same bunch don't ripen at the same time, unlike mangoes, grapes or any other fruit. Jatropha nuts are of little use for whatever purpose unless fully ripe. To a hard-nosed businessman, this is something else.
Imagine a 25,000-hectare plantation where jatropha trees are planted 2.5 meters by 2.5 meters apart. You would have millions of jatropha trees, and harvesting only the ripe fruits would be a tedious, time-consuming process that you could never hope to mechanize. Any investor who gets into the jatropha-plantation business will be in for one helluva payroll and labor nightmare.
Point No. 2—and this is the program's fatal flaw: Did the proponents of the jatropha program know that based on India's experience, the bio-diesel oil that jatropha yields is useful only for two-cylinder engines such as water pumps and other light-duty machines?
India , according to the experts I've asked (Why weren't they consulted by the DOE for a clearer picture of what it was plunging into?), was also very enthusiastic about jatropha's potentials. But this was before it discovered too late the setbacks cited above.
The Indian government was ahead of the Philippines in jatropha-oil refining by several years. It had, in fact, set an ambitious target of developing 250,000 hectares for jatropha production. When they began to see what were fundamentally wrong with the undertaking, it was rather late in the day. India's jatropha farms are now down to less than 2,500 hectares.
It might be worth the DOE's while to check the veracity of these observations. And, perhaps, as far as the production of biodiesel is concerned, coconut oil as feedstock remains one of our best bets.
