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Midrand - Zimbabwe plans to use jatropha to produce up to 10% of its fuel needs or 100m litres of biodiesel per year by 2017, the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe said on Monday.
Abisai Mushaka, the company's biofuels programme manager, said biodiesel would then substitute 10% of fuel imports.
"We plan to meet our 10% national target or roughly 100m litres per year by 2017," Mushaka told a conference.
Jatropha is a non-food crop whose oil can be used to produce
biodiesel. It can be grown on semi-arid land and poses less of a threat to food production than other biofuel feedstocks such as grains and vegetable oils, supporters argue.
Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis has made it
difficult for it to invest to meet its internal fossil fuel
demand, but its biofuels potential is believed to be significant owing to fuel shortages and a need for energy independence.
The state-owned company plans to plant jatropha on 120 000
hectares of land. In the period between December and March,
farmers planted 1.5m jatropha plants on average per week.
Mushaka said that if Zimbabwe managed to double that rate,
it could meet the 10%-target two years earlier. The national oil firm launched a programme to support planting jatropha by providing technical and financial support and by supplying seedlings. The majority of the jatropha plantations are small-scale operations, Mushaka said.
Mushaka said a 35m litres biodiesel plant was
comissioned in 2007 and he expects the jatropha production to
meet the plant's capacity by 2013.
The biodeisel plant is being funded via a 50-50 joint
venture between the Zimbabwean government and Malaysia.
Zimbabwe started producing ethanol for transport as early as
1979 when it faced international sanctions, but stopped mainly
due to drought and partially to ban the use of benzene in the
extraction of ethanol.
The National Oil Company's director for technical support services Griefshow Revanewako said that in a partnership with Triangle it has revived an ethanol plant, which now produces up to 60 000 litres of ethanol per day at a B10 blending level.
Revanewako said the partnership aims to increase ethanol
output to the maximum capacity of 120 000 litres per day.
- Reuters