Pathway to a land-neutral expansion of Brazilian renewable fuel production
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 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).
Författare
Luis Ramirez Camargo
Universität für Bodenkultur
Universiteit Utrecht
Vrije Universiteit Brüssel (VUB)
Gabriel Castro
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)
Universität für Bodenkultur
Katharina Gruber
Universität für Bodenkultur
Jessica Jewell
Universitetet i Bergen
Internationales Institut fuer Angewandte Systemanalyse
Chalmers, Rymd-, geo- och miljövetenskap, Fysisk resursteori
Michael Klingler
Universität für Bodenkultur
University of Innsbruck
Olga Turkovska
Universität für Bodenkultur
Elisabeth Wetterlund
Internationales Institut fuer Angewandte Systemanalyse
Luleå tekniska universitet
Johannes Schmidt
Universität für Bodenkultur
Nature Communications
2041-1723 (ISSN) 20411723 (eISSN)
Vol. 13 1 3157Mechanisms and actors of Feasible Energy Transitions (MANIFEST)
Europeiska forskningsrådet (ERC) (950408), 2021-03-01 -- 2026-02-28.
Ämneskategorier
Förnyelsebar bioenergi
Bioenergi
Energisystem
DOI
10.1038/s41467-022-30850-2
PubMed
35672306