Abstract
Biodiesel from jatropha has been considered as a promising alternative to fossil fuels for some time. Consequently, China started promoting jatropha as one of the options to meet its ever-increasing energy consumption, and the Chinese biodiesel industry also gained interest. However, the excitement of the biofuel industry in jatropha faded after it did not bring about the expected results. This article investigates the stagnation in jatropha development and production for biodiesel in China, using two detailed case studies of jatropha biofuel production in southeast China. It is found that the underdeveloped biodiesel policy and regulation, such as a rather late formulation of standards for biodiesel (especially the B5) and the absence of mandatory targets, is an important reason for hampering jatropha development. Besides that, lack of financial support undermined sustained jatropha planting at the farm level and lack of sustained commitment from state-owned enterprises or private companies over a long time span further contributed to jatropha project’s failure. Better implementation of the rule of law, mandatory blending requirements, hazard insurance, as well as continuous financial support, might improve the continuation of jatropha plantation schemes.
Highlights
Global warming, high fossil fuel prices, an increasing alertness for energy security and greater recognition of the environmental consequences of fossil fuels create an urgent need to enlarge the development of renewable energy sources [1,2]
For them, the future income or general profitability of the project is more important in determining success. These diverging perspectives in jatropha investments are to some extent comparable to other sectors; for instance, investment in forestry or orchards needs to deal with a long time horizon before returns capitalise, which is problematic for small forestry farmers [30,35]
In the case in Sichuan, the local government and farmers seem to be in a situation of mutual resource dependency, according to which the government depends on farmers’ willingness to contribute with labour, while the farmers depend on the government for access to programmes and monetary resources
Summary
High fossil fuel prices, an increasing alertness for energy security and greater recognition of the environmental consequences of fossil fuels create an urgent need to enlarge the development of renewable energy sources [1,2]. In smallholder contexts of developing countries, the implementation of large-scale plantations involves a considerable number of stakeholders who need to cooperate for a lengthy duration of time, i.e., from plantation to seed harvesting. Such failures of large-scale jatropha projects prompted Kant and Wu [13] to coin the current developments as the “collapse of jatropha as a global biofuel”. Few studies have looked at the general causes of this failing jatropha biodiesel development, and remained focused on the technology dimension Against this background, this article analyses jatropha developments in China in general and explores the large-scale planting of jatropha as energy crop for biodiesel production.
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