Environmental sustainability of biodiesel in Brazil

Abstract

Biodiesel production in Brazil has grown from 736 m³ in 2007 to 2.7 Mm³ in 2012. It is an emergent bioenergy for which it is important to guarantee environmental sustainability. The objective of this article is to characterise the biodiesel production chain in Brazil, to identify potential environmental impacts and to analyse key drivers and barriers for biodiesel environmental sustainability. This article explores these aspects and focusses on the increasing demand for the main feedstocks for biodiesel production in Brazil: soybean oil and beef tallow. The impacts of land use and land-use change on greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity and water, as well as the energy balance, were found to be critical for the environmental sustainability assessment and development of biodiesel chains. Increasing agriculture yields, diversifying feedstocks and adopting ethyl transesterification can contribute to minimise environmental impacts. It was also found that environmental impacts could be mitigated by appropriate policies aiming at an integrated optimisation of food and bioenergy production and through agro-economic–ecological zoning, allowing adequate use of land for each purpose. Despite the limitation and weakness of some sustainability tools and initiatives, certification and zoning can play an important role in the sustainability of the emerging biodiesel production in Brazil.

Introduction

Current liquid biofuel production processes rely on first-generation conversion pathways and comprise two distinct products: bioethanol and biodiesel. Policies worldwide have stimulated biofuel demand by setting targets and blending quotas and have aided its development by establishing support mechanisms (such as subsidies and tax exemptions in the starting point of the programmes) (Bringezu et al., 2009). In this context, over the past 5 years, liquid biofuel production increased at an average annual rate of 17% for bioethanol and 27% for biodiesel, reaching over 107.5 million m³ (21.4 and 86.1 million m³ of biodiesel and bioethanol, respectively) in 2011 (REN21, 2012). Biodiesel accounted for approximately 5% of the world biofuel production in 2000, but this share has been rising and, in 2011, biodiesel represented about 20% of the total biofuel production.

Fig. 1 shows the growth in biodiesel production since the year 2000. The columns in the figure represent the contribution of different world regions for biodiesel production of the five most important countries. Europe was the dominant region with increasing production since 2005. North America was a distant second producer led by the United States of America (USA) until 2009 when production in USA fell by over 10,000 barrels per day (mainly due to the economic downturn, incentives changes for biodiesel and foreign trade policies), while growth continued in Central and South America and Asia and Oceania. The five most important countries (55% of world production in 2010) were Germany, Brazil, France, Argentina and USA (EIA, 2012).

In Brazil, the federal government created in 2004 the National Biodiesel Production and Use Program (PNPB). The objective of the PNPB was to implement, in a sustainable way, in technical and economic aspects, the production and use of biodiesel and to allow initially the blend of 2% biodiesel (in volume) with diesel (B2) on a voluntary basis. Federal law 11,097 (Brasil, 2005) was approved in 2005 to establish a mandatory target of 2% and 5% of biodiesel addition to diesel oil in 2008 and 2013, respectively. In July 2008, the National Council of Energy Policy (CNPE) adopted 3% of biodiesel as the compulsory blend, which was raised to 5% (B5) in January 2010, anticipating in 3 years the goal set in 2005 (MME, 2013).

The fast growing interest and production of biodiesel worldwide has led to increasing concern about the environmental, economic and social impacts, especially regarding competition for land, air and water emissions, biodiversity and the ‘fuel versus food’ debate, also in Brazil (e.g., Padula et al., 2012, GEA, 2012, Janssen and Rutz, 2011, Diaz-Chavez, 2011, Lange, 2011, Lynd et al., 2011, Schaffel and La Rovere, 2010, Santos and Rathmann, 2009). To counterbalance these potential negative effects, it is crucial to establish an overview of current and future trends of biodiesel in Brazil, including characterisation of the production chain, main impacts and several policies, standards and certification schemes in place to help biodiesel sustainability assessment and development.

This article provides an overview of the key challenging factors towards environmental sustainability of biodiesel in Brazil, based on an overview of the biodiesel production chain and environmental impacts. It is organised in five sections, including this introduction. Section 2 presents a characterisation of the biodiesel chain in Brazil, focussed on the main feedstocks (soybean oil and beef tallow). Section 3 analyses the main environmental impacts of biodiesel. The key drivers and barriers for the environmental sustainability of biodiesel in Brazil are discussed in Section 4. Section 5 sets forth the concluding remarks.

This article aims to address only the environmental impacts of biodiesel from soybean and beef tallow in Brazil; however, it must be taken into account that the economic aspects of biodiesel are the main reason for choosing these two raw materials for biodiesel in Brazil. Other feedstocks such as palm and castor oil present high opportunity costs (NAE, 2005) as they are used in the food industry and others (more interesting in economic terms). Soybean oil is the main raw material because it is the by-product of the production of soybean meal for animal feed (to be exported together with the grains). In a similar way, beef tallow is the by-product of meat production to be exported. However, it must be observed that, even in the case of soybean and tallow biodiesel, most biodiesel is commercialised in auctions by Petrobras (the Brazilian oil company), which pays prices much higher that the final price of biodiesel blended with diesel oil in the country (diesel oil prices are controlled by Federal Government as a tool against inflation rates).