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Sugarcane Ethanol: Contributions to Climate Change Mitigation and the Environment
However, a book from Wageningen Academic Publishers - Sugar Ethanol - Contributions to Climate Change Mitigation and the Environment - looks at how this expansion will affect the Brazilian country and agricultural economy, its environment and the effect on global land use.
The book, edited by Peter Zuubier and Jos van de Vooren, sets out to answer whether biofuels do help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time offer new sources of income for farmers; whether they compete with food for arable lane and at the same time contribute to higher food prices and are they threatening the environment.
The book largely limits itself to sugarcane and the contribution it has on climate change mitigation and the environment.
Zuubier and van de Vooren show that Brazil is dominant in the production of sugarcane with the country accounting for 75 per cent of the increase in the area of land allotted to sugarcane between 2000 and 2007. Brazil also had two thirds of the global increase in production during that period.
The book looks at the massive expansion of sugarcane cultivation in Brazil. It shows that the main areas of cultivation are in the São Paulo state area and that 99 per cent of the land that was taken over for growing sugarcane in 2007 and 2008 was from pasture land or agricultural land - more than 2 million hectares.
It says that pasture land was responsible for 45 per cent of the increase and agricultural land 50 per cent. The rest came from citrus fields and also deforestation.
Between 2002 and 2006 773 hectares of pasture land changed to production of sugarcane, 103,000 hectares changed from land used for other crops and 125,000 hectares started to be used for sugarcane production from land previously unused.
The book says that Brazil was predicted to reach 11.7 million hectares of land for sugarcane production by the end of last year.
However, Zuubier and van de Vooren say that there is no evidence to show that deforestation is a direct consequence of sugarcane production. Nevertheless, the book does show that sugarcane production in Brazil does comply with the targets for greenhouse gas reduction.
It outlines two scenarios - aiming to increase the electricity surplus with cane biomass residues and using residues for ethanol production. Both scenarios look to the future to 2020.
The success of Brazil's sugarcane to bioenergy production is down to the fact that it can produce high levels of ethanol, 7,000 litres of ethanol per hectare, and electricity, 6.1 MW hours per hectare, with low input of fertiliser and chemicals.
The country is also reducing greenhouse gas emissions and has scheduled the end of sugarcane burning by 2014.
Brazil's forecast production of ethanol by the end of last year was 70 billion litres, with 80 per cent of this being used in transport.
The book says that ethanol production for Brazil, the USA and the EU should reach 165 billion litres by 2020 and at the same time vehicle efficiency will lead to a slowdown in demand for transport fuels. It forecasts that changes in technology could see transport returns of km per litre of ethanol.
The future for the industry will be determined by the diversity of the regions supplying ethanol and the present international market could become a truly global market.
However, it shows that there is a changing market for ethanol with the emergence of lignocellulosic ethanol, second generation ethanol production. It shows that first generation technologies are not sustainable and will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It sees the production of ethanol from sugarcane, and to some extent palm oil and jatropha seed oil, as sustainable because they will not compete with food production in the same way that other crops used for ethanol do.
The book also looks at the different mandates that have been put in place by governments around the world and compares the feasibility of the US and EU policies with those in Latin America, Africa and Oceania.
It says that sugarcane ethanol can contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals because of its advantages over fossil fuels.
However, it says that the development of oil prices is also crucial to the development of biofuels.
But it is the environmental benefits from sugarcane ethanol production that stand out in the biofuels market.
In his foreword to the book, José Goldemberg, professor at the University of São Paulo summed up the influence that an expanding Brazilian sugarcane ethanol production will have on the world markets.
"The present area used of sugarcane for ethanol production in Brazil today is approximately 4 million hectares out of 20 million hectares used in the world by sugarcane in almost 100 countries. Increasing the areas used for of sugarcane for ethanol production in these countries by 10 million hectares would result in enough ethanol to replace 10 per cent of the gasoline in the world leading to a reduction of approximately 50 million tons of carbon per year. This would help significantly many OECD countries to meet the policy mandates adopted for the use of biofuels," he said.
"Such course of action would of course require a balanced weighting of the advantages of replacing gasoline by a renewable fuel and impacts and land use and biodiversity."
January 2009
