Today in Biofuels Opinion: “Sadly the [jatropha] blunders have taken place largely because promoters and growers didn’t bother to RTFM.”
Biofuels Digest special correspondent Joelle Brink: “Sadly the [jatropha] blunders have taken place largely because promoters and growers didn’t bother to RTFM, in this case Heller’s pioneering work on sustainable jatropha culture and use “The Jatropha System“ and his recent exhaustive guide “The Jatropha Book”, which tackles the pitfalls and how to avoid them for specific global growing regions…Originally Jatropha production sprang from a European and UN initiative to create a socially responsible fair trade relationship between the developed consuming nations and the impoverished agricultural workers of producing nations, especially women. Or, more cynically, to avoid another antagonistic OPEC type energy relationship. Indian Railways, D1 and other large scale enterprises in India must conform to this model, which is enforced by the Indian government. Without an informed and responsible government or trade association to ensure sustainable production all sorts of bad business and growing practices are likely.”
From the Chilling Effect: “The George C. Marshall Institute looks at the price tag of proposed Low Carbon Fuel Standards (LCFS), which are part of the Obama energy agenda and the Waxman-Markey bill introduced this week…The assessment of a hypothetical LCFS requiring a 10% reduction in GHG emissions via use of ethanol effective in 2020 found costs of $65.5 billion annually — equivalent to $570 per household per year…The estimated net savings in emissions is 142 million metric tons per year — equal to 7% of transportation emissions and 2.2% of total projected U.S. emissions in 2015 with a per ton cost of $457, which is significantly larger than the costs of other possible reductions.”
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- From Today in Biofuels Opinion: “Sadly the [jatropha] blunders have taken place largely because promoters and growers didn’t bother to RTFM.” « Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative on Apr 9, 2009
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Gary Batchelor | Apr 8, 2009 | Reply
Reference Joelle Brink’s comments. I have spent a considerable amount of time and money from 2006 to date researching and growing jatropha in Indonesia and concur completely with Joelle. I have found that Jatropha is a wonderful tree and grows extremely rapidly in our environment. We consistently have trees either from seeds or cutting producing their first fruit as early as 4 months of age. I have photos and documentation to back up these claims. But I must also say that like human children, jatropha needs proper care and attention to maximize its potential as a high yield per hectare biofuel feedstock. That is why despite all the social do gooders intentions, just passing out seed to poor farmers will not work. It will take the attention to all technical details that only a properly managed large scale plantation operation can perform to maximize jatopha as a biofuel feedstock. Farmers that work for us get wages higher than the government minimum wage, a daily hot lunch, medical, retirement and attention to the other social needs of our communities such as clean water, sanitation and other social programs. Former subsistance farmers here have earned working for me more money in the last year than they had previuosly earned in their entire adult lives. Now because of the speculators, Indian conmen and the naive “prospectors” that think they can just walk into any third world country and get their every dream and then cry loud and long when they don’t, hard working developers such as us have difficulty raising capital to really show the world what jatropha can really do. Just look at the excellent reports from jatropha jet fuel and tests of biodiesel made from jatropha to see its potential!!