JATROPHA GREEN OIL INVESTMENT PROGRAMME

Doreen Hemlock Sun-Sentinel.com – 6:34 p.m. EDT, September 28, 2009
Former President Bill Clinton is leading an investment mission to Haiti this week in what some call the highest profile business event ever in that struggling nation, the hemisphere’s poorest.
Among invited guests: a Broward County group led by biofuels company Interex Global, which runs its Caribbean and Latin American operations from Fort Lauderdale. With consulting firm Vyridian of Pompano Beach and nonprofit One Village Planet of Fort Lauderdale, the group plans to train people to grow jatropha in Haiti to produce oil for cooking and for engines to replace imported diesel.
Interex already won a $200,000 grant from the U.S. government’s Trade Development Agency for
feasibility studies. It seeks about $1 million to expand the project to include satellite imagery to identify the best land for planting jatropha in Haiti, said Dennis Dolan Crook, managing director.
Interex eventually aims to help plant 23 million jatropha cuttings a year to replace trees of all types
now chopped for firewood, an amount so huge that Haiti is largely deforested, he said.
Clinton is spearheading the mission and the Oct. 1-2 business meeting in his role as U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti.
He is coordinating efforts with Inter-American Development Bank, the largest lender for development projects in the hemisphere; the Soros Funds led by financier George Soros; and other investment groups and donors.
Other South Florida firms invited on the mission include shipping company Seaboard Marine and garment maker Perry Ellis International.
Analysts say the investment push stands a greater chance of success than others for three reasons.
First, Clinton has rock-star status that can mobilize business, government and nonprofit groups. He has a track record in coordinating development efforts working with the United Nations after the Asian tsunami
in 2004.
Second, Haiti is more politically stable, with many groups tired of feuding over ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and looking ahead instead. Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis is a noted technocrat who has worked with Soros.
Third, more Haitians overseas are uniting to help their homeland of 9 million people, offering technical aid and money.
Clinton’s verve and the increased stability, analysts say, should spur more foreign donors to pony up funds pledged for reconstruction after back-to-back hurricanes left at least 700 dead in Haiti last year, many from landslides prompted by erosion. But hurdles remain.
“The big challenge,” said Robert Maguire, a Haiti specialist at Trinity University in Washington, D.C, “ is for all the actors to sublimate their individual agendas and move together for the good of the country. This is not something we’ve seen much of in the past.”

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Reuters: Thursday 15th October 2009
The biofuel industry in Sweden is all set to expand primarily due to the new legislation on energy and climate strategy passed by the Swedish parliament.
The Swedish government intends to have its transport sector fossil fuel free by 2030.
The government is also planning to introduce a new legislation which would make 10% bioethanol blending and 7% biodiesel blending mandatory by July, 2010.
The European Parliament has mandated a minimum 10% blending target of biofuels with fossil fuels for the transportation sector by 2020. To achieve these ambitious objectives, numerous financial and tax incentives are being provided to boost the development of the biofuels industry in Sweden.
This legislation is expected to usher in a new era of growth for the biofuels industry in Sweden and is thus expected to enable the country to have zero net carbon emissions by 2050.

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2009-10-12 10:33 BJT
After producing aircraft components for Boeing for more than two decades, China is expected to become the US airplane manufacturer’s research and development (R&D) partner for environmentally friendly
technologies that will make the aviation industry greener.
A key part of the partnership will be to develop biofuels that will allow the aviation industry to have a low-carbon lifecycle footprint, said Matthew Ganz, vice president and general manager of Boeing Research & Technology, a central R&D unit of The Boeing Co.
Air New Zealand conducted a two-hour flight in December 2008 using a fuel blend of 50 percent jatropha and 50 percent standard jet fuel to power one of four engines of its Boeing 747- 400.
Boeing is currently in talks with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and several Chinese universities about the potential partnership, Ganz said. But he declined to release further details about the form of the partnership and the amount of investment involved.
The US aircraft producer has been collaborating with aircraft engine companies and airlines to explore the adoption of biofuels in aviation.
Biofuels are produced from renewable biological resources such as plants, rather than traditional fossil fuels. They have a lower environmental impact than petroleum-based fuels.
First-generation biofuels, such as ethanol, might compete with food producing and are not suitable fuels for powering commercial aircraft because many of these fuels don’t meet the high performance or safety specifications for jet fuel. Boeing is mainly looking at second-generation biofuels,  sourced from feedstocks such as jatropha, camelina, algae and halophytes.
“The near term collaboration opportunities for Boeing and China could be the commercialization plans for
jatropha,” said Mike Hurd, deputy director of environmental services strategy for Boeing Commercial Aviation Services.
“China has tremendous resources and could be a leader in biofuels development,” Hurd said.
Jatropha is a plant that produces seeds containing inedible oil that can be used to produce fuel.
Each seed produces 30 percent to 40 percent of its mass in oil.
Jatropha can be grown in a range of difficult soil conditions, including arid and non-arable areas and therefore is less likely to displace food crops.
Wild and planted jatropha can be found in southwestern China’s Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. Yunnan province has about 33,000 hectares of jatropha, according to statistics from the provincial forestry authorities.
Planting jatropha has become a focus for the local government’s biofuel development plans since 2007. The province plans to develop about 666,700 hectares of jatropha forest by 2017, and the plants will be able to provide 1 million tons of biodiesel annually.
China has been promoting the development of biofuel plantations to reduce the country’s dependence on
imported crude oil. The country is expected to have 13 million hectares of biofuel plantations by 2020 that can yield 6 million tons of biodiesel annually, Xinhua News Agency reported.

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Oct 15, 2009 By Bettina H. Chavanne MCLEAN, Va. — U.S. Navy
Secretary Ray Mabus introduced sweeping changes to the
service’s energy policy at the Office of Naval Research’s Naval Energy Forum here Oct. 14. Citing the United States’
propensity for “bold steps,” Mabus listed five so-called
energy targets he proposes the Navy meet in the next decade.
He put some of the onus for reform on industry, noting the Navy and Marine Corps will change the way contracts are awarded.
The lifetime energy cost of building and powering a system will be mandatory elements of future awards, as will a company’s own commitment to energy efficiency. “We want industry to partner to produce energy-efficient products and to produce them in energy-efficient ways,” Mabus said.
Mabus also introduced the idea of a Great Green Fleet, a green strike group comprising nuclear vessels, surface combatants equipped with hybrid electric systems operating on biofuels and aircraft powered solely by biofuel. The strike group would set sail as soon as 2016.
By 2015, Mabus would like the  Navy to reduce petroleum use in its 50,000-vehicle fleet by half, and by 2020 he wants the service to fulfill at least half of its shorebased energy requirements with alternative sources. Mabus noted that China Lake Naval Air Station, Calif., already generates 20 times the power load of the base.
Most importantly, Mabus said, “I’m asking all of us to meet an ambitious goal.” By 2020, he wants half of the total energy consumption for all ships, aircraft, tanks, vehicles, installations, etc., to come from alternative sources. “Right now I’m told 40 percent is a more realistic goal,” Mabus said. “But our Navy and Marine Corps have never backed away from a challenge.”

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Southern Times 25 October 2007

The new fuel is made from vegetable oil, the sort of thing people cook with or sprinkle on their salad. Any vegetable oil will do, including waste oil from hamburger joints when the chips have been cooked.
The environmental advantages of bio-diesel are obvious.
Carbon dioxide is recycled between vehicles and plants, dramatically reducing the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Bio-diesel is also a very clean fuel, meaning that there are no other pollutants emitted into the air.
Modern economies are built around liquid fuels and biodiesel, coupled with more efficient engines and other factors, allows continued economic development while actually reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Many third world countries without oil fields are already using bio-diesel, or plan to do so, to limit imports of increasingly expensive petroleum and reduce dependence on external suppliers. The environmental factors are also important for this group since they allow development to first world standards without the opprobrium of boosting carbon loading of the atmosphere to intolerable levels.
Farmers in all parts of the world love the fuel, giving them a good market for oil seeds, including oil seeds, like those from jatropha, that are not edible.
In Southern Africa, swathes of India, parts of South and Central America and Australia, jatropha stands out as the feedstock of choice for bio-diesel.
It has been described as a miracle plant, able to flourish in semi-arid land and being a highyielding perennial tree.
It has been around for a long time, with commercial production centred on producing high-quality industrial oils. But the arrival of bio-diesel has elevated it into a cash cow for tens of thousands of farmers.

The Zimbabwe Government saw its potential about two years ago.
With jatropha they had a cash crop that would start producing within three years, would grow where no other cash crop would grow easily, was fairly easy to grow, although needing some care in seedbeds in its first year, but once established could provide a permanent income for even the laziest farmer.
At the same time as the agricultural experts were looking for a cash crop for newly resettled farmers, the economists reckoned Zimbabwe’s foreign currency shortages could be dramatically eased if petroleum imports could be restricted without damaging the economy.
The two groups suddenly found jatropha was the obvious solution to both their problems and within a few months the wheels were in motion to get thousands of small-scale farmers to plant the crop. What Zimbabwe does now need is the processing plant.
Namibia is now following suit and it is obvious that farmers in northern and eastern Botswana should also be taking a good hard look at the crop. There is not much else to add to livestock rearing in many of these areas, and the first-class infrastructure that Botswana is putting in place will aid jatropha production.
Botswana and Namibia could well investigate a joint processing plant, at least while they are building up feedstock supplies. For what all those so keen on bio-diesel must realise is that their dreams will come to naught unless such plants are built in time to process the first main crop. It is one of those chicken and the egg problems.
Farmers cannot market jatropha seed until such a plant is built, but such a plant is useless unless there is feedstock.
Thousands of Zimbabwean farmers have taken their Government’s word at face value and are planting jatropha.
In two years time, as the first crop comes onto the market, the industrialists must have their refinery ready. The same conundrum will face Namibia.
Everyone talks about agroindustries, and the need for smart partnerships between farming and industrial sectors.
Jatropha producers and biodiesel refiners now have to turn that talk into trees in fields and refineries on the ground.

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