Brazil is going to need more than biodiesel and ethanol to have 18% of the energy mix be biofuel-based by 2030, as pledged in the Paris Agreement. Analyses made by Embrapa Agroenergy point that, in the most likely optimistic scenario, these two products could account for a maximum of 12.3% of the total energy that the country would require in 13 years. The researcher Bruno Galvêas Laviola, from Embrapa Agroenergy, explains that the text of the contribution established by Brazil (Intended Nationally Determined Contribution - iNDC) does not clearly state whether the target includes bioelectricity - generated by burning sugarcane bagasse, for instance. However, if it is included, there will be no gains that contribute to reducing the country's greenhouse gas emissions by 43%, as the government vouched. That is so because nowadays bioenergy as a whole already accounts for much more than 18% of the national energy mix. The challenge would be reaching such mark with vehicle fuels and others like biogas. “It is an audacious target, if only the current biofuels are considered”, he assesses. Considering the sector's estimates for increased supply of ethanol, the most consolidated fuel in the country, the team calculated the extent to which biodiesel production and use would have to grow to meet the goal. In a first scenario, with ethanol growing 5.1% a year, the amount of biodiesel added to diesel would have to rise to 69%, which would require the installation of 395 refineries - it is currently mixed at 9% and there are 43 refineries in Brazil. Even if the ethanol growth rate doubled, it would still be necessary to reach 48% of biodiesel mixed into diesel and build 267 new industries so that the two biofuels combined would correspond to 18% of the national energy mix. Besides the high investment, the unavailability of the raw material and the need to adapt engines make such higher mixture of biodiesel to diesel impracticable. Raw material is certainly an important bottleneck. Since the beginning of the biodiesel program in Brazil, soybean oil corresponds to between 70% and 80% of total raw materials used by the industry, since it is the only oilseed with enough production scale to meet the demands of a sector that requires large volumes of inputs. The most feasible growth scenario for biodiesel is getting to a 15% mixture in 2030, which would require the oil from 35% of the Brazilian soybean harvest. But also it bears a major challenge. Today, only 41% of the grain production is extracted in the country, of which only 15% of the oil is destined to biodiesel refineries. The other 59% are exported as fresh beans and constitute one of the main Brazilian export items for the trade balance. “Increasing soybean oil extraction for biodiesel in the country would have a direct impact in the grain's international trade”, Laviola remarks. Once at 15% in the mixture, biodiesel could account for 3.7% of the Brazilian energy mix. Even if ethanol grew twice as as much as expected, there would still be 5.7% missing so that both fuels alone could meet the target. Increasing the mixture of biodiesel to 20% would nevertheless require consuming the oil of almost 50% of the soybean harvested in the country in 2030, which would hardly be viable. “In the case of biodiesel, if there is no diversification of raw materials, with scale of production, increasing the percentage in the mixture to levels above 15% will be complicated”, he warns. A new green fuel that could help the country fulfil the commitment made in Paris is biokerosene for airplanes. The international aircraft sector has greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and, in Brazil, there are initiatives to promote biomass byproducts as fuel, such as the platforms in the states of Minas Gerais and Pernambuco. Biogas is another fuel with quite a lot of potential, especially because it makes use of residue - from 2015 to 2016, it grew 46.2%. The full study is available on Embrapa Agroenergy's website. Click here to access it.