Seed of a solution?

Plans for biodiesel plantations in the developing world With soaring oil prices and pressure from the EU to use more renewable transport fuel, one British company thinks it has found the perfect solution - in the jatropha tree. UK-based D1 Oils is planning to cultivate six million hectares of the oil-bearing crop in India, Africa and the Philippines, to make biodiesel for Britain’s cars and trucks. The company floated on London’s alternative investment market to fund the venture. It’s excited by the green credentials of biodiesel, which can cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 60%. It also believes the crop will provide much-needed employment in third world countries. It is marketing mobile refineries, powered in remote locations by their own produce, as a one-stop shop for small-scale producers to make fuel from various feedstocks. Because jatropha thrives in relatively inhospitable soils, the trees are unlikely to be competing with land for food crops, or replacing swathes of rainforest, as is often the case with palm oil. It remains to be seen how the D1 Oils supply chain will measure up on key sustainability issues like labour standards and pesticide use. And there’ll be a lot of ‘fuel miles’ involved in bringing jatropha oil to this country. Won’t it undercut the market for biofuel produced in Britain, just as our farmers are being encouraged to diversify into energy crops? David Turley, of Defra’s Central Science Laboratory, believes it is “a threat - although we’re already importing palm oil”. In the end, though, whilst we do have the capacity to produce more biofuel in Britain, it comes down to a question of land use. “We have to think whether we want to put additional land over to crops like oilseed rape,” says Turley, “when it could be kept as biodiversity-rich set aside. You have to balance this against the issues of carbon saving and climate change.” - Hannah Bullock

27 January 2005

Hannah Bullock