Brazilian indisputable leadership in Bioenergy

In 2020 me and Frineia Resende interviewed Glaucia Souza (ALive episode #12 – portuguese only) professor of Chemistry at the University of São Paulo about the Brazilian leadership in bioenergy and bioeconomy. She is coordinator of the largest Bioenergy program in Brazil (FAPESP’s) and, consequently, the world.

I decided to select some highlights from our conversation and post here, to foster collaboration in this are that Brazil has, in her words, undisputed leadership.

We have been operating for decades on different fronts and technological routes that have ensured Brazil undisputed leadership in this field. [Many] Countries plan strategic routes and public policies to enter this area (bioenergy). [However] no country with a population of over 60 million has a matrix with more than 40% renewable. [Today] 42.9% of Brazil’s total energy is renewable. We show how a large economy in a country of continental dimensions can achieve such an ambitious goal.

It is important to remember that this leadership didn’t come to happen overnight.

Since 1500, sugar has been produced in Brazil. For centuries this was the flagship of our economy. In 1929 we started using ethanol for transportation. In the 1970s, with the oil shock, we changed our energy matrix to encourage renewables and started the pro-alcohol program. We opted for a different growth model and became an example of the use of biofuels in the energy matrix. In the 2000s, parallel advances on two fronts boosted bioenergy: flex-fuel engines (which run on both gasoline and alcohol) and the sequencing of the genome of sugarcane and many other microorganisms involved in the production of ethanol. This is disruptive innovation! Many startups that started in healthcare, because traditionally the healthcare area has more investment because of Farma, are now in bioeconomy. And now the petrochemical companies are coming. We have a movement in the world of refineries becoming biorefineries.

The consequences of these achievements go beyond energy into public policy and Carbon reduction.

We have a modern agriculture with multiple products that can be transformed into bioenergy and bioproducts that promote the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere. […] The state of São Paulo created an agroecological zoning based on FAPESP’s BIOTA program, which mapped where to plant what, considering ecosystems, biodiversity, current and ideal land use. This legislation is an example of how science can impact sustainable economic development. […] Brazil managed to replace 50% of its transport matrix (use of energy in transportation) for renewable [fuel], with ethanol. It’s a world record! Sugarcane bagasse is the flagship of renewables growth in Brazil, accounting for 17% of our electricity matrix. And we were able to do that using very little land.

This dimension of land use is very important because all these benefits would disappear with deforestation. I wrote about the land use and misuse in Brazil and in the world with Glaucia’s arguments.

I hear a lot that bioenergy is going to take up a lot of land in the world. This is a fallacy. It’s just not true.

Considering that, regardless of other reasons, it is important to have a diversified global energy matrix, it would be counterproductive not to use the Brazilian experience and technology to expand the bioenergy share.

Just 1,5% of all the land available on Earth could, with modern bioenergy, produce 25% of the global energy matrix.

We have 13 billion hectares of land in the world. Of this, 1.5 billion, corresponding to one Russia, are or will be used for food production in the world until 2050. Native forests add up to 3 billion hectares, which corresponds to all of Central and Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. southern. There are 0.1 billion planted forests, one Bolivia. All modern bioenergy in the world (2016 data, re-validated in 2020 with a growth rate of 3% per year), is 13 million hectares, which corresponds to one Nicaragua. Old bioenergy, which burns wood for industrial and residential use, is slightly larger, with 41 million hectares, and would correspond to the United Kingdom and Iceland. The area needed for modern bioenergy to contribute 25% of the global energy matrix by 2050 is estimated to range from 50 to 200 million hectares, the equivalent of one Spain.

The amount of land needed seems even less impressive when we see that 3.4 billion hectares, more than all the forests and more than double the entire area used for food production, an area that corresponds to the United States, Mexico, Peru, Brazil and Argentina together, is of degraded or hypo-sufficient pastures (with less than one head of cattle per hectare), that could/should have a more noble use. This is the target of the unsustainability of the world!

If technology and good examples are abundant, why bioenergy is not more widespread? To Glaucia, the problem is not availability of resources, is governance:

The problem is not land availability, it is not water availability. The problem is to create clear governance over the use of these resources and a State project that definitively includes bioenergy in the country’s energy matrix and innovation.

True, but I think incentives comes before governance, and I believe we have a long way to go on redistributing incentives to change unsustainable choices of the past. This is a huge terrain for innovation in the years to come.