Nature publishes special on biofuels

Edition, which contains scientific articles and coverage of biofuels from different perspectives, is sponsored by FAPESP

6/27/2011

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – The current edition of Nature magazine contains a special supplement on biofuels. The publication was sponsored by FAPESP, the U.K.’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the U.S. Energy Department’s BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) and the Ceres and BP corporations.

Entitled “Sewing substitutes for fossil fuels,” the supplement is a collection of articles and reports that cover biofuels from different perspectives.

The article “Moving forward with biofuels” was penned by Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz (FAPESP’s scientific director), Richard Flavell (chief scientist at Ceres), Martin Christie (director of communication and sustainability at BP Biocombustíveis), Janet Allen (BBSRC research director), Douglas Kell (CEO of BBSRC), Martin Keller (associate director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory) and Paul Gilna (director of BESC).

In the article, the authors highlight that biofuels could represent a significant part of the answer to a common question: how humanity can move toward low carbon mobility while guaranteeing a sufficient supply of food and environmental services, and on the other hand, minimize or revert greenhouse gas production in the current context of forecasts that global energy usage will double by 2050.

According to the authors, biofuels could substitute many investments in oil, particularly, liquid fuels utilized in transportation. Additionally, they may serve as oil substitutes in petrochemical industries, like, for example, production of green polymers.

Still, production of biofuels from plants has generated much controversy and misinformation, which according to the authors, justifies and makes opportune the magazine’s special supplement on the topic.

“Large scale production of biofuels, as part of more efficient global agriculture, is vital not only for sufficiency, safety and energy sustainability, but is also among the main topics of political, regulatory and sustainability debates,” the authors affirm.

According to the article, in 2010, the United States produced 13 billion liters of corn ethanol, which corresponds to approximately 10% of the total fuel consumed in the country and represents an 800% increase from the beginning of the decade.

Brazil, for its part, also saw production increase, reaching approximately 8 billion liters of sugarcane ethanol or 50% of the fuel consumed in the country. But unlike the United States, this increase was not obtained solely through expansion of the planted area for biofuel crops.

There was also a considerable increase in productivity. “In the sugarcane area, Brazil’s productivity soared from 50 tons per hectare in 1975 to 80 tons in 2005,” according to the authors.

The text also highlights Brazil’s successful experience in utilizing sugarcane ethanol as a fuel through small adjustments in auto motors and production of so-called green polyethylene by petrochemical concerns like Braskem, in addition to farneseno (sugarcane diesel), which should be produced by Amyris in the near future.

“The greater the body of information on large scale experiments conducted in the United States (with corn) and in Brazil (with sugarcane), the more innovation and/or improvements will be possible in all stages of the production chain, as well as new projects for production processes and biorefineries,” they affirm.

Lessons from Brazil

In the article “Lessons from Brazil,” Marcia Azanha Ferraz Dias de Moraes, economics professor at the Luiz de Queiroz Agriculture School at Universidade de São Paulo (USP), covers the lessons that Brazil has to offer several other countries, based on its 35 years of experience as one of the largest global biofuel producers.

These lessons include the feasibility of substituting some fossil fuels for a renewable alternative, the need for clear rules on the market, the presence of economies of scale, environmental protection and attracting foreign investment.

“Any country that wants to attract domestic or foreign investment must have clear rules on how the ethanol market will function. One must establish, among other things, how price formation will occur, competition with gasoline, a stock financing policy and job creation,” Moraes told Agência FAPESP.

Among the other articles published in the supplement are: “A new hope for Africa” by Lee Lynd, of Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering; “Direct impacts on local climate of sugar-cane expansion in Brazil” by Scott Loarie, researcher at the Global Ecology Department at the Carnegie Institution for Science, and others; “Microbial production of fatty-acid derived fuels and chemicals from plant biomass” by Eric Steen, from the University of California at Berkeley’s Department of Bioengineering, and colleagues.

The special supplement Nature Outlook on biofuels can be accessed at www.nature.com .