J. curcas is not an invasive species. Jatropha is a natural plant, established pre­dominantly through human intervention. Due to the size and the weight of its seeds, they are not dispersed by wind. Animals do not eat the fruit or seeds because of their bitter taste and therefore the seeds are not dispersed through animal droppings. Other than human intervention, Jatropha seeds are likely to be dispersed only by running water. Jatropha has been widely cultivated on a small scale in a wide variety of locations from Central America to the Pacific Islands, and there are no scientifically substantiated reports of the species behaving in an invasive manner.

J, curcas is, however, classified as invasive in some countries, including Aus­tralia. This classification is based, we believe, on confusion between J. curcas and other species of Jatropha (e. g., J. gossypifolia). We understand that these classifi­cations are now being re-examined as more research is carried out on the crop. Studies that support this conclusion include Staples et al. [3] and Van Aarde [4].

We can confirm that J. curcas does not appear on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) list of invasive species (www. invasivespecies. net).

Furthermore, J. curcas does not appear as a weed or otherwise on the website of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC; www. ippc. int) — the international treaty governing intergovernmental action on pests, weeds, and plant diseases.

3.7

Agriculture in India is a very sensitive subject, because it affects 800 000 farmers. It really is a holy cow!

The global “fuel-or-food” debate will be rendered irrelevant by its biofuel busi­ness model, claims Reliance Life Sciences (RLS), part of the Reliance Industries Group, one of the conglomerates in India (http://www. livemint. com/2008/07/ 20232412/Reliance8217s-new-biofuel-b. html, 11 January 2011). RLS is promoting the concept of “fuel-and-food” by intercropping Jatropha with food crops.

The company says it is currently testing intercropping of Jatropha and Pongamia (non-edible fuel crops) along with a diverse set of food crops, including corn, mango, medicinal plants, and vegetables, in its research and development farms at Gandhar in Baruch, Gujarat and Nagothane in Raigad, Maharashtra.

RLS cooperates with General Motors in developing energy crops in India, and with this biofuels initiative RLS intends to contribute to India’s energy security and put purchasing power in the hands of millions of farmers in India. RLS is doing extensive research on Jatropha and develops hybrid varieties of biofuels that will double the yield under irrigated conditions. Test plants have shown a yield of around 10 tonnes of oil per hectare.

In Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and, RLS is building clus­ters of 100 000 acres of plantations delivering biomass 100 000-tonne biofuel extraction plants [3].

5.3

Nestle

Nestle has an original twist to intercropping. Nestle buys coffee from coffee farmers in the Philippines. Nestle encourages its farmers to plant Jatropha between the coffee. Thus, the main crop is still coffee, but the farmers will earn extra income when the Jatropha fruits are ripe to be harvested.

The world’s annual consumption of jet fuel (excluding military) is about 2 billion barrels and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has stated it wants 10% of jet fuel to come from biofuels by 2017. For the reasons

discussed above, we believe that in the early years, Jatropha oil is by far the most desirable biofuel partial replacement additive to jet fuel and this trans­lates into a potential biokerosene market of 200 million barrels of Jatropha jet fuel per year.

I forecast the price of carbon credits to rise from the present historically low price of around $6-7 to $15 per tonne in 2014. In the first 3 days after the Japanese Tsunami and their nuclear reactor melt-down in March 2011, all financial markets went into a tailspin except for the price of carbon, went up by 12%.

There are new, high-potential opportunities to generate carbon finance in the biodiesel sector. The use of petrodiesel in engines creates a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions that can be greatly reduced by substituting a blend of biodiesel and petrodiesel or using 100% biodiesel. Greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced in a number of ways through the biodiesel pro­duction process:

• Carbon sequestration in the plantations of trees whose seeds are used for biodiesel production.

• Substitution of petrodiesel for biodiesel.

• Use of processed seedcake as an organic fertilizer.

Table 9.1 shows CER estimations for a 500-hectare J. curcas plantation. Note that trees per hectare can vary greatly and the price of CERs ranges according to the risk taken by the developer regarding guarantee of delivery of CERs.

Biodiesel production is a growing industry throughout the world. Interest in the use of the seeds of J. curcas, as well as other plants, to make the oil is rapidly expanding. CDM potential is present in a large number of countries due to the number of types of plants from which biodiesel can be made. The time for rea­lizing the potential of biodiesel in the carbon market has arrived.

New Jatropha plantations qualify to receive carbon credits; soybeans and rapeseed do not qualify.

130 | 9 Carbon Credits

9.3

Ethanol is produced from sugarcane juice through a fermentation and distilling process. The juice is first purified by various filtering processes until it is ready to be fermented and mixed with yeast. One tonne of sugarcane yields about 85 liters of ethanol. After the United States, Brazil is the second largest ethanol producer in the world. Since March 2008, the volume of ethanol consumed in Brazil has been greater than that of gasoline. I expect the U SA to curb ethanol production from corn and limit ethanol exports to Brazil, all because of the devastating crop losses in 2012. From a Brazilian point of view, without ethanol imports from the USA ethanol prices at the pump in Brazil will rise substantially.

Flex-fuel cars are cars that run on either gasoline, ethanol, or a mix of the two. The “flex” part is a simple computer chip, which was invented by a Brazilian student. The Brazilian car industry and Volkswagen, in particular, introduced flex — fuel cars in 2003, and today they account for over 90% of new light vehicle sales. Of all vehicles on the road in Brazil in early 2010, 40% were flex. A significant milestone was reached by Brazil’s automotive industry in March 2010, when the 10 millionth flex car was built.

13.7

Luckily, 10 years from now oil will no longer mainly be flowing from the Middle East to the United States, Europe, and Asia. Due to technological developments and new discoveries, new sources of oil are being explored in new areas of the world, making democracies much less dependent on oil flowing from countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, or Venezuela.

A lot of new oil deposits have been found in the Western hemisphere. Indeed, in the exploration cycle of oil it takes around 10 years to find, pump, refine, and transport new oil to your local gas station. However, major technological break­throughs have been made, unavailable 10 years ago, and large pockets of new oil supplies are being made available from Alberta in Canada, North Dakota and South Texas in the United States, and Brazil.

The oil production from tar sands in Canada stands at about 1.5 million barrels today and this is already a bigger production than Libya’s output when Gadaffi was still in power. I expect that Canada’s oil production will be ramped up to 3 million barrels around 2020. By then Canada will become the fifth largest oil producer in the world after Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and China. Of course, there are great environmental concerns. On average, carbon dioxide output from gasoline produced from oil sands is about 15% higher then conventional fossil fuel oil. However, oil sands do contribute greatly to energy reliability and security. More then 50% of Canada’s oil exports come from tar sands and this percentage will only increase in the years ahead.

In the United States, new shale gas techniques and horizontal drilling have been developed to explore new deposits in North Dakota and Southern Texas. It is now possible to extract oil from non-porous dense rock formations. Without these new extracting and drilling techniques oil would not flow. North Dakota is already producing 500 000 barrels a day. I expect that by 2020 the United States will also produce a total of around 3 million new barrels of oil a day.

In 2005, Brazil discovered huge offshore oil deposits below a layer of salt, which is around 2.5 km thick. The state-owned oil company Petrobras had the technology to “look” through the salt belt and discovered these new deposits. Progress to pump oil from these deep-sea pockets is on track and Brazil expects to produce around 5 million barrels a day by 2020. This is twice Venezuela’s output and also more than the present oil production in Saudi Arabia. Thus, next to sugar and soybeans, Brazil will become a powerhouse in oil as well.

This is a real paradigm shift, which can add a substantial new oil production of 11 million new barrels a day by 2020 in the Western hemisphere. So the new oil will flow more North to South and South to North, instead of East to West.

1.14

Several pests and diseases have been reported. In general, pests and diseases do not cause severe problems, although arthropod worms called millipedes (Latin for "1000 legs”) can cause total loss of young seedlings. Millipedes live outdoors in the damp under leaves, needles, and dead plant debris. Seedlings are also susceptible to competition from weeds during their early development. Therefore, weed control, either mechanical or by spraying herbicides, is necessary during the first couple of months in the nurseries.

3.1.26

Limitations of the Crop

There are several limitations:

1. The seeds are toxic and the seedcake as such cannot be used as an animal feed. Without detoxification the seedcake can only be used as an organic fertilizer. Recently, at the University of Hohenheim in Germany, on a laboratory level detoxification of the Jatropha seeds has been made possible. As soon as large jatropha crops are harvested in 2013 and even more so in 2014, the seedcake can also be used as animal feed, as long as detoxification costs are keptunder control.

2. Jatropha prospers only in tropical climates. It cannot be planted in climates where temperatures fall regularly below 0°C because the plant will die. Here as well, research is taking place to develop Jatropha plants apt to grow in colder climates.

3. Jatropha is not a fast-growing crop like sugarcane or Camelina. Many Jatropha projects and initiatives have been abandoned because investors did not have the financial foresight to wait 4-5 years for a good return on their investments.

4. Jatropha is labor-intensive and cannot be harvested mechanically on a large scale like corn. Labor costs are a major item on financial spreadsheets for Jatropha planting.

4.3.1

Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil

Did you know that almost half the products on an average supermarket’s shelf contain palm oil, ranging from margarines and biscuits to lipsticks, shampoo, and detergents?

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO; www. rspo. org) is an associa­tion of many palm oil stakeholders. The RSPO says palm oil production can be considered sustainable if it meets certain criteria such as protecting and conser­ving the environment around the plantation, and dealing with its workforce and local communities in a responsible way.

However, the environmental group Greenpeace said in a report "Palm oil: cooking the climate” (www. greenpeace. org) that the system was failing to tackle issues such as deforestation, peatlands clearance, and land conflicts. It said the criteria needed to be toughened up. RSPO argued that the assessment processes were sufficiently rigorous, but added that the conclusions ofthe Greenpeace report would be examined.

The RSPO said it expected palm oil production capacity certified as sustainable to reach 1.5 million tonnes by early 2009, compared to total annual palm oil production of more than 38 million tonnes. Most of the demand for sustainable palm oil comes from Europe and, to some extent, the United States.

4.3.2

Food security is a major issue in developing economies, particularly in relation to the use of land for fuel crops and the worry about the resulting loss of arable and grazing lands. Communities depend on the land to survive: they gather various resources in the wild (nuts, tree branches, etc.), hunt, rear free-range livestock, and practice shifting cultivation for farming.

As a policy, SORESIN does not trespass, interfere, or encroach on community farmlands. Before beginning operations, SORESIN compiles information on farm locations that fall within the land acquisition area, which are then carved out ofthe plantation and preserved. Sometimes, land that has been farmed extensively becomes overgrown and degraded, in which case the company often offers a land swap to move the farmer to more fertile land and assists them in preparing the new land for production, and then we work to repurpose the degraded land to make it viable again with Jatropha.

SORESIN also only uses a small portion of arable land in any area for Jatropha operations, therefore land availability for agriculture production and livestock rearing is not significantly reduced so that it does not affect food security.

Finally, SORESIN allows for space in between our Jatropha rows for grazing ground and intercropping by the community for food production.

6.7.7

The U SDA is a very big energy consumer with a car fleet of almost 43 000 vehicles. The Department reported 42 882 light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles in the motor vehicle inventory in 2009. The approximate total fuel consumption was 19.5 mil­lion gallons. USDA Motor Vehicle Fleet traveled approximately 342.5 million miles with approximately $41 million in fuel costs reported. Time to set an example and use clean biofuels (http://www. whitehouse. gov/blog/2010/10/22)!

11.5

Partnership with the FAA

The USDA is already partnering with the Department of the Navy as it embraces a biofuel future. The USDA also announced another partnership with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the FAA (www. faa. gov). Under the Memorandum of Understanding, the USDA and FAA will work together with the airline industry over the next 5 years to develop appropriate feedstocks that can be most efficiently processed into jet fuel. Doing so will decrease the industry’s current dependence on foreign oil and help stabilize fuel costs in the long run.

12

15.1

important Aviation Facts

Aviation provides the only rapid worldwide transportation network, is indis­pensable for tourism, and facilitates world trade. Air transport improves quality of life in countless ways. Air transport makes the world smaller and moves over

2.2 billion passengers annually. The air transport industry generates a total of 32 million jobs globally. Aviation’s global economic impact (direct, indirect, induced, and catalytic) is estimated at $3560 billion, equivalent to 7.5% of the world’s gross domestic product. Aviation is responsibly reducing its environ­mental impact. Air transport’s contribution to climate change represents only 2% of man-made carbon dioxide emissions and this could reach 3% by 2050, according to updated figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; http://www. ipcc. ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index. htm). This evolution is based on a growth in aviation carbon dioxide emissions of 2-3% per year, with an annual traffic growth of 5%. The air transport industry is now working towards carbon-neutral growth — no increase in carbon emissions in spite of traffic growth — as a first step towards a carbon-free future. Aircraft entering today’s fleet are 70% more fuel-efficient than 40 years ago, consuming 3.5 liters per passenger per 100 km. The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner is the company’s most fuel-efficient airliner and the world’s first major airliner to use composite mate­rials for most of its construction. According to Boeing, the 787 consumes 20% less fuel than the similarly sized 767.

15.2