D1 Oils is taking the leading role in cultivating non-edible oils for biodiesel. They're planning on Jatropha, which has a higher yeild than Pongamia or moringa, but is lethally poisonous to both people and animals (limiting the use of byproducts as fertilizer or animal feedstocks---but requiring no pesticides).
Importantly, D1 is working with universities in the Netherlands to improve the yeild of Jatropa lines. None of the non-edible oil stocks have ever gone through any selective breeding, and they display a range of 20-40% in the amount of oil contained in their seeds. A program for breeding these plants would probably win a grant pretty much anywhere.
It's unclear to me why development is being limited to Africa and India; presumably land values are too high in Australia. It's also possible that, even for this low-water species, Australia is too dry.
Anyway they're investing >$100M in this and are developing the kind of huge chunks of land that people have always thrown about as being concievable:
The figures for land contracts are either fake or revolutionary: even at a conservative 500 litres oil/hectare the 70,000 hectares contracted here would replace 70% of the UK's yearly oil consumption.
There are also a few 'hippy' projects, such as one run by the Himalayan Institute. Neodyne is an Indian company that's planning the growth of pongamia, particularly for the direct use of seed oils in diesel engines to promote village economies.
D1 doesn't look like a hippy project and it ain't aiming for villages. It looks like big business, the kind of entrepreneurship that high oil prices (and taxes, and an economy that has so disconnected itself from industry that it can grow independant of oil consumption) lead to.
No comments:
Post a Comment