- Macaúba, a palm tree found across the Americas, is tipped as a new biofuel feedstock to decarbonize transport and aviation. The macaúba palm produces an oil when highly refined that can be made into renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
- Bolstered by hype and billions of dollars of investment, companies are planning to plant hundreds of thousands of hectares on reportedly degraded land across Brazil. Firms are also investing in major refining facilities. This macaúba gold rush was triggered by major financial incentives from the Brazilian government.
- Macaúba’s potential green attributes are similar to jatropha, a once promising biofuel feedstock that bombed a decade ago. Macaúba is widespread but currently undomesticated. Whether macaúba plantations can achieve the yield and scale needed to help satisfy the world’s sustainable energy needs remains unknown.
- Industry proponents state that it can be produced sustainably with no land-use change or deforestation. But other analysts say that very much depends on how the coming boom, in Brazil and elsewhere, pans out.
Macaúba palm, also known as macaw palm, grows all over the Americas. Now, a drive by the Brazilian government to incentivize the decarbonization of the transportation and aviation sectors has resulted in numerous companies turning to this palm as a potential feedstock to be refined into liquid biofuels and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) across the Latin American nation.
On paper, macaúba palm appears to be a miracle plant: It thrives on degraded, unproductive land, so won’t compete with food crops or cause new deforestation, and, in testing, it has yields eight to ten times higher than soy, depending on whom you ask. Soybeans already feed Brazil’s vast biofuels industry but, along with sugarcane, soy is tied to environmental harm, especially deforestation and CO2 emissions, and environmental justice issues.
According to proponents, macaúba promises to sidestep these issues; it’s already dubbed as “green gold” and “rainforest-friendly palm oil.” But there are significant environmental and financial risk too, say critics. Macaúba’s promotion closely parallels past hype from investors and entrepreneurs who backed a would-be biofuel called jatropha, so offers a cautionary tale.
In the 2000s, jatropha — also hailed as “green gold” — ticked many of the same boxes and its boom saw dozens of projects planting the energy crop across the tropics, only to then fail spectacularly, as it proved far more challenging to grow than claimed. The effort cost millions of dollars, and spawned widespread accusations of land grabbing, while resulting in land-use change and biodiversity loss in tropical countries.
Opinions are mixed as to whether macaúba will make the grade. For Almuth Ernsting, a researcher with the NGO Biofuelswatch, macaúba’s buildup sounds like a “smaller version” of the hype seen around jatropha.
Miracle fuel, or just like jatropha?
On paper, macaúba has all the hallmarks of a great biofuel feedstock, and more. Experts note that its oil and other plant parts can be utilized in a wide variety of products, ranging from foods to cosmetics. Some researchers say it could even be the basis for a strong bioeconomy, supporting smallholder farmers in the process and helping mitigate climate change. Such claims were also made for jatropha.
One thing is sure: Brazil is awash with degraded agricultural land, especially abandoned cow pasture and worn-out croplands. Four billion liters (1.05 billion gallons) of sustainable aviation fuel could be produced per year if just 10,000 square kilometers (3,861 square miles) of land were converted to macaúba palm plantations, says Ricardo Fujii, a conservation specialist at WWF Brasil. “That is equivalent to 0.1% of the Brazilian territory.”
For now, macaúba’s hype and investment remain centered in Brazil and neighboring Paraguay. At least three companies thus far are aiming to exploit its potential. This drive is being boosted by billions of dollars of private investment, plus green government incentives, including those born out of Brazil’s recently legislated Fuels for the Future bill. This growth will allow Brazil to “drive the world’s largest energy revolution,” according to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Acelen Renewables, a subsidiary of Dubai-based Mubadala Capital, plans to plant 1,800 km2 (695 mi2) of macaúba in Brazil, and produce its first macaúba-based fuels in 2027 or 2028, transforming the palm into renewable diesel and SAF. Renewable diesel (RD), often made in converted oil refineries, has the advantage of being a “drop in” fuel, able to replace fossil diesel without any changes to an existing diesel engine or turbine.
Environmentalists have raised concerns about RD, saying that industry lifecycle carbon emission claims are often exaggerated and that, when RD use is scaled up, it will quickly outstrip existing feedstock availability, leading to an explosion in energy crop expansion, risking a new wave of tropical deforestation and other environmental harm.
Acelen has already started planting macaúba palm at a model farm in Brazil’s Bahia state, says company COO Marcelo Cordaro. “It will be a gradual planting, year by year, until we reach 180,000 hectares [444,800 acre] of degraded pastures in the states of Minas Gerais and Bahia.” Minas Gerais state is at the intersection of three prominent Brazilian biomes, while Bahia state is in the Cerrado savanna, a biome much reduced by industrial agriculture, particularly soy production.
Another company, Brazilian-German Inocas aims to plant around 500 km2 (193 mi2) of macaúba by 2030, using degraded cattle pasture and saying it will collaborate with smallholder farmers and support “regenerative agriculture.”
Promise of expansion — but doubts and constraints
If early efforts reap fuel and profit, macaúba could spread to other tropical countries and continents. Acelen says further study is needed to identify suitable locations beyond Brazil, “but its cultivation in other countries can be considered in the medium and long term,” says Cordaro.
A paper published earlier this year assessed suitable climatic locations where macaúba can grow. It highlighted South Asia, and Indonesia, in particular, with high potential for the energy crop. Similar studies showcasing jatropha’s adaptability laid the foundations for its rapid expansion and eventual bust.
Simone Palma Favaro, a researcher at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa in Portuguese) believes that as a native fruit to Brazil, macaúba won’t follow a similar path as jatropha in the country.
But that doesn’t mean success will take hold elsewhere. In her view, the global study failed to account for factors key for macaúba’s growth, such as soil requirements. “Additionally, there is the presence of pollinators, without which there can be no fruit formation, and, in the case of macaúba, these are very specific insects that I believe do not exist on other continents.”
Like jatropha and also oil palm, macaúba palm requires extensive manual labor; plucking the oil-rich kernels must currently be done by hand. Researchers are working to solve this challenge through mechanization, but until then a large agricultural workforce will be required to make this crop work.
Another issue is that, just because a plant can grow on degraded land, it doesn’t mean it will thrive and provide high yields there; that’s one of the key lessons from the jatropha experience, says Ernsting. Acelen notes that new plantations will still need to use “traditional” mineral fertilizers, for example, to make the trees thrive year after year.
Concerns are that, despite its promise, macaúba could lead to the same negative land-use changes as jatropha and other biofuel crops, particularly in the already highly threatened Cerrado, much of which is not protected. To that point, back in 2016 researchers highlighted this possibility at the outset of the macaúba hype, finding that much of the suitable planting area overlaps with areas of “high conservation value.” Climate change could also place constraints on where macaúba grows in the near future.
Critics also worry that renewable diesel and SAF will fail to live up to their sustainable credentials once upscaled due to dubious carbon counting, the need to tap into higher carbon intensity feedstocks, and indirect deforestation, limiting their effectiveness as climate solutions.
Ernsting underlines that oil palm — a key driver of tropical deforestation — requires the smallest area of land per ton for vegetable oils. “It’s precisely the high yields and adaptability of African oil palm, coupled with the vast and unsustainable demand for vegetable oils, especially for biofuels, that are responsible for the large-scale land-conversion and land-grabbing for oil palm plantations,” she says. “The idea that another oil crop can help meet this unsustainable, constantly growing, demand with less harm is just absurd.”
However, others, including Fujii, believe that best practices, such as combining macaúba with pasturelands and intercropping, offer a potential route forward. “In theory, [it] is possible to have a sustainable biofuel produced from macaúba that delivers not only emissions reduction, but also improves food production and protects biodiversity,” says Fujii. He does agree that, though the risk of deforestation or degradation is minor, it still exists “particularly considering that Brazil has a bad track record on protecting its natural habitats.”
“Brazil has a lot of degraded areas, but it’s the same with any biofuel,” says Ana Carolina Oliveira Fiorini, post-doctoral researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro’s Energy Planning Program. She led a 2022 paper assessing decarbonization and deforestation potential for macaúba and other energy feedstocks in Brazil. “You have to make sure that it is actually grown on degraded lands and not competing with food crops or expanded into areas covered with natural vegetation to be sustainable,” she says.
Macaúba takes off?
It will take time for macaúba’s potential to become known — one way or the other. That’s because it will take up to six years for the seeds sown today to grow to maturity. Also, the tree has yet to be fully domesticated, meaning that hoped-for high yields cannot be guaranteed.
Researchers and companies are currently planning to pick seeds from the most promising wild trees and plant them, creating cultivars that can be easily reproduced. But genetic work — to breed high-yielding crops — is ongoing and remains a challenge.
Simone is positive that the palm’s potential will be achieved, whether that’s for biofuels or other industries. Her lab worked on jatropha during its boom and bust, and she says she believes macaúba differs from that failed venture. She notes that much of the scientific groundwork that jatropha lacked is now being done on Brazil’s native palm. In Fujii’s view “commercialization at an economic scale” might take up to 10 years to develop.
Sergey Paltsev, deputy director of the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy, co-authored a 2024 report on Latin America’s decarbonization pathways. It only briefly covered macaúba, concluded that the palm has potential, but it is too early to assess.
“As with any new technology, there is a risk that technology will not deliver as promised,” Paltsev says. “We need all sustainable options to accelerate decarbonization, and macaúba might be a substantial contributor to these efforts. We just need to explore more and understand better the actual performance.”
The scene is set for a potentially vast expansion of macaúba plantations across Brazil, and possibly other countries and continents. Only time will tell whether it proves viable or flops like jatropha. And this grand experiment comes with risk: The threat of land-use change, especially further deforestation, and the feeding of demand for biofuels that have yet to prove their emission-slashing promise.
Until its plants come to fruition, Acelen plans to make its biofuels from established crops like soy. “The prospect is that we will be producing 100% macaúba by the end of this decade,” says Cordaro.
Correction 5/23/25: In this story as originally published Mongabay erroneously reported that “Acelen has already started planting genetically modified cloned macaúba palm at a model farm in Brazil’s Bahia state, according to company CEO Marcelo Cordaro.” However, Acelen contacted Mongabay with a correction, noting that the macaúba it has planted in Bahia is not genetically modified. In addition, Marcelo Cordaro is the firm’s COO, not its CEO.
Banner image: Oils extracted from macaúba palm fruits can be used in a wide range of industrial processes, including foods cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. It’s tipped to provide feedstock for vast amounts of biofuels, notably renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Image courtesy of Acelen Renewables.
Jatropha: The biofuel that bombed seeks a path to redemption
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