Pathway to a land-neutral expansion of Brazilian renewable fuel production
Journal article, 2022

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 with H-2 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 similar to 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 95euro tCO(2)(-1).

Author

Luis Ramirez Camargo

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

Utrecht University

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)

Gabriel Castro

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

Katharina Gruber

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

Jessica Jewell

University of Bergen

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Chalmers, Space, Earth and Environment, Physical Resource Theory

Michael Klingler

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

University of Innsbruck

Olga Turkovska

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

Elisabeth Wetterlund

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

Luleå University of Technology

Johannes Schmidt

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

Nature Communications

2041-1723 (ISSN) 20411723 (eISSN)

Vol. 13 1 3157

Mechanisms and actors of Feasible Energy Transitions (MANIFEST)

European Research Council (ERC) (950408), 2021-03-01 -- 2026-02-28.

Subject Categories

Renewable Bioenergy Research

Bioenergy

Energy Systems

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-30850-2

PubMed

35672306

More information

Latest update

7/1/2022 6