Inglês
Espanhol
Brazil´s Biofuels Take Centre Stage in Climate Change Debate
In order to increase exports of ethanol from sugarcane and biodiesel, Brazil’s processing companies need to prove to the US and Europe the environmental and social benefits of their production.
Por Thaís Brianezi
According to the Unite Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the transport industry accounts for about 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide (CO2) release. The information explains why the World Carfree Day, the 22st of September, is included in the calendar of the Global Action Campaign for Climate Protection. It also explains why the São Paulo State Federation of Industries (FIESP) has created a Working Group to follow international negotiations in preparation to the 15th UN Conference on Climate Change (COP-15), to be held in December in Denmark. “If developed countries set higher targets to reduce emissions of greenhouse effect gases, there could be higher international demand for biodiesel and mainly for Brazil’s ethanol from sugarcane”, said Rodrigo Lima, general-manager of the Institute for Studies on International Trade and Negotiations (ICONE), a non-government organization (NGO) created in 2006 by agribusiness associations.
Conquering the foreign market is the core desire of the 65 biodiesel processing companies existing in Brazil, whose current export levels are meaningless. National legislation mandates a 4% mixture of biodiesel into regular diesel, which creates domestic demand of about 1.8 billion litres a year for the former. Processing companies’ installed production capacity is well above that: 3.8 billion litres a year. “The federal government is granting licenses for biodiesel production without considering the current demand for the product,” complained Roberto Engels, executive-director of Biocapital, a company located in Charqueada, in the state of São Paulo.
In the case of fuel made from sugarcane, the domestic market is more promising but also insufficient. Data from Brazil’s National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels (ANP) show that ethanol is already the core fuel within Brazil’s energy matrix for lightweight vehicles. The so-called flex-fuel cars represent 94.2% of total sales in the country: 2,065,313 vehicles using both gasoline and ethanol were registered last year. National ethanol consumption in the first half of 2009 was 10.7 billion litres, 17.7% above the same period last year. Growth in ethanol production during the 2008-2009 harvest over the previous agricultural year, however, was higher: it went from 22.5 billion litres to 27.5 billion litres – a 22% increase. Brazilian ethanol exports are also on the rise (going from 3.6 million litres to 4.7 million litres within the same period), but still account for only 0.017% of total sales. “Our main challenge is to break tariff and non-tariff barriers imposed by developed countries on ethanol,” said Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) president Marcos Jank during the opening of Ethanol Summit 2009 – the main event in the sugar-alcohol industry, held in June in São Paulo.
A war on numbers
In early May, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released studies showing that among the so-called biofuels available in the market, Brazil’s ethanol is the most efficient to reduce greenhouse effect gas emissions (GEEs), so that it is able to compete for advanced fuel quotas provided for in US laws regarding renewable fuels. Compared to emissions by vehicles running on gasoline, sugarcane ethanol would reduce the amount of GEEs launched into the atmosphere by 44% on average. For corn ethanol, in turn, the reduction would be 16%. Those figures took into account gases released along the whole production cycle and the use of that biofuel from plantations to vehicles on the road.
In spite of good results, Brazil’s ethanol producers were not happy with the evaluation. The most controversial point of the math was the inclusion of the so-called indirect use of land: deforesting estimated as a result of migration of farming displaced by plantations for biofuel raw materials. For sugarcane ethanol, indirect emission accounts for 46 of the 73 grams of CO2 per megajoule set by the US government. In corn ethanol, of a total of 99 grams of CO2 per megajoule, only 30 would come from indirect use of land. “EPA delayed until September 18 the public consultation to review the indexes publicised. Therefore, we are establishing, with the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute (FAPRI), a calculation model that is better for Brazil’s reality”, explained Lima. “We have 200 million hectares in pastures with low productivity. Expansion of sugarcane plantation will not take place over the forest”, he argued.The differences in methodologies to calculate the so-called carbon cycle were evident in the workshop “Socioeconomic, Environmental and Land Use Impacts”, held in June by FAPESP’s Bioenergy Research Programme (BIOEN) in São Paulo. Three research studies were presented that measured the carbon balance resulting from sugarcane plantations. In the study by the University of Illinois, the balance is negative, that is, the plantation ultimately released GEEs. In the study conducted by the Centre for Nuclear Energy in Agriculture at São Paulo University (CENA/USP), the result was the opposite: plantations retained more carbon than the amount released by soil preparation. EMBRAPA Agrobiology came to a conclusion that is similar to that by CENA/USP, but considered that the accumulation of carbon in soils depends on their level of degradation. “Uncertainty and variability about the figures we work with are clear here”, said Heitor Cantarella, coordinator of BIOEN’S Impact Divisions. “We need standard methodologies; our intention is to create a working group to discuss that reconciliation in no hurry”, underscored Gláucia Souza, the programme’s coordinator.
Lame tripod
%20em%20PE.JPG)
Sugar cane in hillsides flout law Environmental Measures in Pernambuco.
Just as ethanol and biodiesel processing companies in Brazil look at the international market, they are themselves the focus of important foreign buyers. In late 2008, for instance, the European Parliament approved the European Directive, a voluntary commitment by the European Union (EU) to reduce 20% of its GEE emissions by 2020 (over 1990 levels). As a strategy to reach that target, the Directive sets the adoption of at least 10% of renewable fuels in transport by 2010 and that they should undergo a certification process to guarantee that previously established social and environmental rules are met.
UE member countries have a July 2010 deadline to define criteria for that certification, but some principles are already agreed upon, such as preserving biodiversity and not using slave or degrading labour. Brazil’s biofuel has serious problems in both areas, besides efforts to improve its image. In São Paulo – the state that accounts for 60% of the country’s ethanol production – 157 processing companies have joined the Agro-environmental Protocol proposed by the State Environmental Department. The key point is the immediate end of sugarcane straw burning in new plantations and the shortening of the deadline for old ones to adjust (state law establishes 2021 as the deadline for mechanisable plantations to stop using fire and 2031 for non-mechanisable ones, and those deadlines have been advanced to 2014 and 2017, respectively). The Protocol, however, says nothing about one of the main bottlenecks for companies in the state: they do not respect the so-called legal reservation, that is, the 20% of vegetation cover in the property that should be preserved in the Atlantic Forest Biome. “You cannot call Programme Green Ethanol a protocol that does not mandate the existence of a legal reservation”, criticised Mário Mantovani, director of environmentalist NGO SOS Mata Atlântica.
Regarding labour-related matters, violations by sugarcane processing companies are yet more scandalous. The industry is first in the shameful national ranking of slave labourers in Brazil: last year, 2,553 people were freed from plantations (49% of the total), according to official data gathered by the Land Pastoral Commission (CPT). This year, by July 22, the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MTE)’s Mobile Inspection Group found other 951 workers in degrading conditions in sugarcane plantations, which is 47% of slave labourers freed during the period. One of them was Florisvaldo Suzart, a 43-year-old farm worker who left the state of Bahia to work in sugarcane plantations in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
On June 25, President Lula – the Brazilian ethanol’s poster boy – launched the National Commitment to Improve Labour Conditions in the Sugarcane Industry. The protocol was the result of a dialogue table established in July 2008, which included government, businesses, and workers’ representatives. It is not legally binding but it has been voluntarily joined by 323 of the 413 processing companies in the country. Three of them are included in the MTE’s dirty list, the federal government’s record of physical and legal persons held accountable in operations of slave labour inspections. At least other 16 have been caught in the act exploiting degrading labour.
While sugarcane farming in Brazil is historically an activity carried out by large landowners, the federal government’s intention was that oleaginous crops used to produce biodiesel would strengthen family farming. The National Program for Production and Use of Biodiesel (PNPB), created in 2004, was aimed at including 200 thousand family farmers into the biodiesel production chain by 2008. The strategy was based on the creation of the Social Fuel Seal, granted to companies that reached a minimum percentage of raw material from family farming (varying from 10% to 30% according to the region of the country), through which they would be able to take part in all biodiesel public auctions and also to receive tax reductions. Data released by the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA) late last year, however, show that the total of small producers benefited by the programme was well behind that: only 37 thousand people have been served. When we look at the raw materials actually used to produce biodiesel in Brazil, the reason is understandable: soybean oil accounted for 81.1% of this year’s total production. Bovine fat, another by-product of agribusiness came in second, with 14.03%.
Ethanol and biodiesel are often called clean energy. Those who invest in them (such as businesspeople and the Brazilian government) believe that the increasing worldwide concern with global climate changes means good business opportunities. Such beliefs are based on sustainability marketing, which leads citizens to believe that they are contributing to make the world a better place by replacing gasoline and diesel with ethanol or biodiesel. However, the sustainability tripod of Brazilian biofuels – environmental, social, and economic – is lame.
Rua Coronel Firmo da Silva, 282, São Paulo-SP, CEP 01255-040
Tel. +55 (11) 2506-6570, 2506-6562, 2506-6576 e 2506-6574 - biobr@reporterbrasil.org.br