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Repórter Brasil launch a report explaining connections between animal fat and biodiesel
The new report also brings analysis on impacts caused by expansion of palm oil, cotton, jatropha, sunflower and rapeseed in Brazil.
By Repórter Brasil
This fifth report by the Biofuel Watch Center (BWC) presents an unprecedented study on the use of animal fat to produce biodiesel, besides dedicating special attention to two crops that have not been covered by this series of studies: sunflower and rapeseed. Also new are case studies on the use of vegetable oils to generate energy in isolated communities in the Amazon. Besides such extension of its investigation focus, the report also features analysis on the impacts of oil palm, cotton, and jatropha - crops that have already been examined in a 2008 study, but which present news that warrant their approach in the present work.
Along 2009, soybean has remained as the flagship of Brazil's biodiesel programme. Data from the National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels (Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis, ANP) indicate that at least four out of five biodiesel drops produced in the country originated from soybean oil. In a lower position come products such as bovine fat and cottonseed and palm oils. Sunflower, rapeseed and jatropha, in turn, have an insignificant share in biodiesel production, but experts warn about the potential of those crops under a scenario of increasing demand. Currently, the country needs to produce 1.8 billion litres of biodiesel a year to guarantee the 4% mixture of that biofuel into regular diesel - the so-called B4. With the coming of B5 in face of the pressure of an industrial sector with installed capacity to make three times as much as it makes today, new raw materials can become viable in the biodiesel production chain.
According to the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA), Brazil's federal government is interested in diversifying biodiesel raw materials. That would be positive to integrate a larger number of farmers into the programme, including their families, as well as to reduce effects of the humours of the soybean international market on the cost of Brazil's biodiesel. One of the measures under study by the government is to extend tax benefits provided for in the National Programme for Production and Use of Biodiesel (Programa Nacional Produção e Uso de Biodiesel, PNPB) to processing companies that purchase raw materials from small farmers, but do not use them to make biodiesel. That happens, for instance, with Petrobras units in north-eastern Brazil.
The company buys castor bean from small farmers, creating a new market niche for them, but, since it does not use that oil to make biodiesel, it does not get part of the incentives. On the one hand, logistic technological, and agroindustrial development created around soybean, which dates back from 40 years ago, should guarantee that the crop ranks first among raw materials used to make biofuels for many years. On the other hand, government as well as businesses know that it would be interesting to seek viable alternatives. That is the case of meat companies that are already using bovine fat to produce biodiesel. That can potentially bring problems from the cattle production chain - from deforesting to slave labour - into Brazil's biodiesel chain. In this report, we reveal situations where that "contamination" is already taking place. In the case of cotton, its development mainly through large properties and with intense use of pesticides raises doubts about its sustainability, despite multiplication of socioenvironmental initiatives by producers' associations. By and large, sunflower and rape, by having a similar potential growth to cotton, impose the same sort of socioenvironmental concerns for their use by the biodiesel chain.
Finally, a note on oil palm. While the planted area in Brazil is stable, the crop started occupying an important space in the agenda of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Ministério da Agricultura, Pecuária e Abastecimento, MAPA), which turned it into a tool to advocate changes in the Forest Code. According to MAPA, which wants the law to allow areas with Legal Reserves that have been illegally deforested in the Amazon to be recovered with non-native species, oil palm could immediately occupy 1 million new hectares. However, environmentalists oppose the measure since the legal reserves should protect the Amazon's biodiversity. To carry out such endeavour, we travelled 27.9 thousand kilometres by air and land, including eight Brazilian states: Amazonas, Bahia, Mato Grosso, Pará, Rio Grande do Sul, Rondônia, São Paulo, and Tocantins. Both in distance interviews and in field research, we had the support of partner organizations, which shared with us precious information and contacts.
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