Pathway to a land-neutral expansion of Brazilian renewable fuel production
Ramirez Camargo, Luis; Castro, Gabriel; Gruber, Katharina; Jewell, Jessica; Klingler, Michael; Turkovska, Olga; Wetterlund, Elisabeth; Schmidt, Johannes
(2022) Nature Communications, volume 13, issue 1, pp. 1 - 10
(Article)
Abstract
Biofuels are currently the only available bulk renewable fuel. They have, however, limited expansion potential due to high land requirements and associated risks for biodiversity, food security, and land conflicts. We therefore propose to increase output from ethanol refineries in a land-neutral methanol pathway: surplus CO2-streams from fermentation are combined
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with H2 from renewably powered electrolysis to synthesize methanol. We illustrate this pathway with the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol industry using a spatio-temporal model. The fuel output of existing ethanol generation facilities can be increased by 43%–49% or ~100 TWh without using additional land. This amount is sufficient to cover projected growth in Brazilian biofuel demand in 2030. We identify a trade-off between renewable energy generation technologies: wind power requires the least amount of land whereas a mix of wind and solar costs the least. In the cheapest scenario, green methanol is competitive to fossil methanol at an average carbon price of 95€ tCO2−1.
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Keywords: Biofuels, Brazil, Ethanol, Methanol, Saccharum, General, General Physics and Astronomy, General Chemistry, General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology
ISSN: 2041-1723
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Note: Funding Information: We gratefully acknowledge support from the European Research Council grant “re-FUEL” ERC-2017-STG 758149 awarded to J.S. and funding the contributions of L.R.C., G.C., K.G., M.K., and O.T. G.C. was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001, E.W. by the Swedish national strategic research environment Bio4Energy, and J.J. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 ERC Starting Grant programme under grant agreement no. 950408 for Mechanisms and Actors of Feasible Energy Transitions (MANIFEST). The simulations were run on the Vienna Scientific Computing Grid (www.vsc.ac.at). We are very thankful for the support provided by the VSC team. We are grateful to Sebastian Wehrle and Marie Claire Brisbois who proofread the manuscript. Funding Information: We gratefully acknowledge support from the European Research Council grant “re-FUEL” ERC-2017-STG 758149 awarded to J.S. and funding the contributions of L.R.C., G.C., K.G., M.K., and O.T. G.C. was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES) – Finance Code 001, E.W. by the Swedish national strategic research environment Bio4Energy, and J.J. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 ERC Starting Grant programme under grant agreement no. 950408 for Mechanisms and Actors of Feasible Energy Transitions (MANIFEST). The simulations were run on the Vienna Scientific Computing Grid ( www.vsc.ac.at ). We are very thankful for the support provided by the VSC team. We are grateful to Sebastian Wehrle and Marie Claire Brisbois who proofread the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).
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