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Abstract
The increase of global biofuel production is supported mainly by energetic policies adopted by important energy markets that aim to promote the production and use of biofuels, including the promising cellulosic-derived biofuels. Brazil is facing a challenge to attain sustainability in ethanol sector and to maintain its position as a major supplier of ethanol to world market in this new era of sustainable biofuel policies. In this paper we carried out a structural path analysis on sugarcane-derived ethanol sector and on a hypothetical bagasse-derived ethanol sector in order to identify the input paths that most influencing their economic and environmental performance. We make an empirical application to the Brazilian economy, using existing data from ethanol sector for 2005 and estimating data for the hypothetical sector. The fuel burned in the transport sector and on-site transport tasks is identified as important element for the environmental performance of both sectors. Also, sugarcane sector is identified to have relevant role in the economic performance of ethanol sector, as enzyme production has in second generation ethanol sector. The results present in this article can provide valuable information for decision-making in both biofuels to address new initiative for effective economic and environmental policies efforts.
Highlights
The increase in global biofuel production is driven primarily by the energy policies that have been adopted in important energy markets to promote the production and use of biofuels [1,2,3,4,5]
In 2009, The European Union adopted the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), which promote the use of renewable energy sources and established a requirement that 10% of transport energy be based on renewable energy sources
To characterize the economic and environmental performance of bagasse-derived ethanol over their life cycle, a Structural Path Analysis (SPA) based on the generalized input-output model (IO) has been applied using the national economic accounts provided by the Brazilian Statistics Institute (IBGE) for 2005
Summary
The increase in global biofuel production is driven primarily by the energy policies that have been adopted in important energy markets to promote the production and use of biofuels [1,2,3,4,5]. In 2009, The European Union adopted the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), which promote the use of renewable energy sources and established a requirement that 10% of transport energy be based on renewable energy sources. In 2012 the European Commission (EC) proposed to limit the use of food-based biofuels to meet the 10% renewable energy target to 5%, stimulating the development of alternatives, such as lignocellulosic biofuels. The literature mentions that biofuel sustainability is associated to the generation of skilled labor, improvements in living conditions for workers, the socioeconomic development of rural areas in middle- and low-income countries, avoidance of competition between food and energy crops and social conflicts, nature preservation, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions [2,4,8,9]
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