Carbon dioxide life cycle assessment for Brazilian passenger cars fleet towards 2050

Abstract

Brazil is the second largest producer of ethanol in the world, losing the first position to the United State of America. Nonetheless, several studies have shown that the sustainability of the ethanol produced from the sugarcane is better than their competitor's wheat, corn, and beet in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, energy rate (input/output), productivity, and energy content. Thus, the different incentives from the government since 1975 to the industry allow it to produce technology capable of using any mix of ethanol hydrous and gasoline in the engines, this also brought several developments to sugarcane productivity. So then, there is a new worldwide transition coming to the world with the focus of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, this paperwork assesses the main problems of the sustainability transition from current Brazilian Flex-Fuel Vehicles to electric vehicles, in terms of Law 13.755, ROTA2030 and the National Plan of Energy - 2050. The results show that the best option for Brazil as a country, considering socioeconomic and environmental impacts, is to introduce as a priority the Hybrid Electric Vehicles with a flex-fuel engine and then the Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles with a flex-fuel engine. The last priority for the transition of midsize and full-size vehicles should be the Battery Electric Vehicles.