Pathway to a land-neutral expansion of Brazilian renewable fuel production

Luis Ramirez Camargo; Gabriel Castro; Katharina Gruber; Jessica Jewell; Michael Klingler; Olga Turkovska; Elisabeth Wetterlund; Johannes Schmidt

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-30850-2

Pathway to a land-neutral expansion of Brazilian renewable fuel production

Luis Ramirez Camargo^*, Gabriel Castro, Katharina Gruber, Jessica Jewell, Michael Klingler, Olga Turkovska, Elisabeth Wetterlund, Johannes Schmidt

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

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 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.

Original language	English
Article number	3157
Pages (from-to)	1-10
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	13
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-30850-2
Publication status	Published - 7 Jun 2022
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical 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).

Funding

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. 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.

Keywords

Biofuels
Brazil
Ethanol
Methanol
Saccharum

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1038/s41467-022-30850-2Licence: CC BY

s41467-022-30850-2Final published version, 1.09 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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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 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 \textasciitilde{}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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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 Coordena{\c c}{\~a}o de Aperfei{\c c}oamento de Pessoal de N{\'i}vel 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{\textquoteright}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 Coordena{\c c}{\~a}o de Aperfei{\c c}oamento de Pessoal de N{\'i}vel 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{\textquoteright}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: {\textcopyright} 2022, The Author(s).",

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AU - Turkovska, Olga

AU - Wetterlund, Elisabeth

AU - Schmidt, Johannes

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N2 - 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 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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Pathway to a land-neutral expansion of Brazilian renewable fuel production

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

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