Q1. Could you please explain briefly your relation with the production of ethanol and biofuels in Brazil?
I’m the director of research at UC Berkeley for the California Air Resources Board to support implementation of the CA Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Part of the standard’s implementation requirements is to assign a global warming intensity value to all the fuels that might be used in CA to comply with the rule, which includes:
(1) Brazilian cane ethanol
(2) Other ethanols that have a land use change effect partially expressed in forest conversion to crop or pasture. A lot of this forest is in Brazil. I’ve visited Brazil doing field work and interviews to understand the cane industry and its practices, and also land use change influences outside the sugar cane region (ie, northern MT).
Q2. Is the surface of crops devoted to ethanol important in Brazil?
In itself, not much; cane stores a significant amount of carbon between harvests. And cane land area isn’t that large compared (for example) to soybeans, cotton, etc. But to the degree that cane displaces other crops into high-carbon-stock land like forest or cerrado, rather than forcing intensification of cattle on existing pasture, it is important in evaluating cane ethanol’s carbon intensity.
Q3. Who are the mains actors concerned by the production of ethanol (such as government, farmers, etc)?
All of those. Also IBAMA (in Brazil) and other enforcement agencies that do or don’t protect forests from clearing.
Q4. Does the culture of crops devoted to ethanol imply a certain level of pollution?
Corn is a big nitrogen runoff polluter into the Gulf of Mexico; if cane is burned before hand harvesting the air pollution is a big problem. If vinasse is not reapplied to fields carefully, it is a water pollutant. Any industrial agriculture has characteristic pollution and environmental risks, that can be managed but not eliminated: pesticides and herbicides, loss of biodiversity, etc. etc.
If you count GHG emissions as pollution, all farming, which necessarily occurs where there would otherwise be grassland, cerrado, or forest, has important climate effects; in addition, farming uses a lot of fossil fuel.
Q5. If so, what type of pollution is in cause?
See above
Q6. Can it have impacts on individuals’ health? On animal’s health? On the environmental balance?
Hand harvesting is dangerous and unhealthy…but maybe not worse than going to try to make a living in a São Paulo favela! Biofuel production, which displaces food production, increases food prices and reduces nutrition worldwide to some degree.
Q7. Is this kind of pollution a fatality or are there solutions possible to avoid it?
Good agricultural practice is cleaner, safer, and less polluting than bad practice, and not more expensive in the long run. But there is no way to grow any ag products without real costs
Q8. What are the different actors’ positions on the production of bio-energies?
I need more detail on this question
Q9. How important is the issue of pollution coming out of bio-energies production?
If you count climate effects, very important (see above).
Q10. What is the position of the Brazilian government?
Officially, of course, protection of natural resources and the environment in ag regions. The revision of the Codigo Forestal is not encouraging…but the forest code has a really serious fundamental defect, namely making private landowners responsible to maintain reserves that show no profit: all the incentives built into this model point in the wrong direction. This also leads to fragmented reserve areas. Belo Monte is certainly not an environmental victory, and now there’s a big very tempting pool of oil off the coast.
Unofficially, corruption is of course still a big problem in Brazil, IBAMA resources are grossly inadequate to the task, and Dilma has a lot on her plate in addition to environment. But the trend is definitely in the right direction. Brazilian policy may offer a model/lessons (both ways) for places like Indonesia, Malaysia, sub-saharan Africa
Q11. Is the Brazilian case unique? Is it the most relevant when it comes to this issue?
Brazil’s incredible ag productivity and enormous (i) reserves of underused ill-managed pasture (ii) remaining forest at risk of clearing make it extremely important, and there’s no single jurisdiction in the world like it.
Because of its enormous efficiency (mostly owing to (i) the need to haul the whole cane plant to the biorefinery, where it becomes fuel (ii) Brazil’s long technical development trajectory and (iii) the cane plant’s gracious habit of making sugar directly rather than starch), cane ethanol with efficient, modern technology is close to a limiting case of bioenergy efficiency (a C4 tropical near-perennial grass, of which you use the whole plant). It’s not as climate-friendly as it would be if the thermal energy could displace fossil fuel instead of hydro. And of course ethanol is not an optimal liquid fuel: cane butanol would be even better.