Abstract
Biofuels need to be sustainable, with low GHG emissions, no use of forest lands, and no competition with food production, and should still be produced at low and competitive cost. The requirements for biofuels to fulfill are somehow “not fair” because they need not only to help reducing GHG emissions but also satisfy requirements they simply were not designed for. Nevertheless, the two most important modern biofuel production systems are the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol and the US corn ethanol. One may ask, what happened with ethanol in these two countries that made their production systems a success? Somehow, in both systems the environment aspect is considered satisfactory, and there is no competition with food production. However, what makes them a success is the economics involved in both cases. Biofuels need to be produced sharing its cost with its coproducts, animal feed (DDG) for the corn ethanol case and sugar and electricity in the case of sugarcane ethanol. Brazil became the first world sugar exporter because of its sugarcane ethanol program, and the United States produced a quite strong beef industry in great part due to its correspondent DDG production largely used as animal feed. However, in both cases, DDG in the United States and sugar in Brazil are relatively saturated. In both countries, a new model will need to be invented. This chapter intends to analyze these issues and discuss the advantages of different production models. Also, the future perspectives of sugarcane biofuels are analyzed in the light of contributing to the global GHG emissions reduction and technology development of the most important biofuel alternatives.
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Notes
- 1.
In Colombia, part of the sugarcane bagasse is used for pulp and paper.
- 2.
There was an initial concern that this practice would cause a reduction in corn supply with substantial increases on food production costs.
- 3.
The total sugarcane planted area in Brazil is nearly 9–10 million hectares, nearly half going to sugar and the other half to ethanol production.
- 4.
Few developed countries use heavily subsidized agriculture commodities to produce biofuels. Many developing countries produce traditional biomass, by simply extracting it from the environment and using it as bioenergy (Cortez et al. 2018).
- 5.
- 6.
Electric cars yet have their own limitations like high battery prices. Heavy vehicles are also expected to be slower in adopting this option and therefore may use biofuels for more years or even decades.
- 7.
The Brazilian Federal Government always understood sugarcane ethanol as an important fuel to be supported for the reasons that range from enhancing national energy security to protecting sugar producers.
- 8.
More aspects of the Brazilian model to produce sugarcane ethanol are given in Cruz et al. (2014).
- 9.
DDG stands for dry distillers grains. It is the coproduct from corn ethanol and is rich in fiber and protein.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
COALBRA – Coke and Alcohol Wood S/A.
- 13.
- 14.
That is, www.sustainableaviation.co.uk, and www.csiro.au.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) for supporting sugarcane bioenergy research “Bioenergy Contribution of Latin America, Caribbean and Africa to the GSB Project – LACAf-Cane.”
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Cortez, L.A.B., Franco, T.T., Bonomi, A. (2019). Future Perspectives of Sugarcane Biofuels. In: Khan, M., Khan, I. (eds) Sugarcane Biofuels. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18597-8_19
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