Brazil: sugarcane bioenergy bypasses hydroelectric power as primary energy source

According to preliminary data from Brazil’s annual National Energy Balance report produced by EPE (Empresa de Pesquisa Energética), sugarcane ethanol and bagasse used for bioenergy became Brazil’s second largest primary source of energy in 2007, bypassing the contribution of hydroelectric power.

Bioenergy has become Brazil's fastest growing renewable energy source and is already generating more power than all non-oil fossil fuel sources combined. As a whole, the country now generates 46.4% of its energy from renewables. This compares very favorably with the primary energy mix of OECD countries, where renewables account for a mere 5.2%.

Brazil is known for its large hydropower infrastructures, with more than 600 dams built on the country's many rivers. The largest dam, the Itaipu, has an installed capacity of 14GW and provides some 20% of Brazil's electricity needs. However, erratic rainfall patterns over the past few years, combined with the fact that almost all large rivers have been dammed, have limited the prospects for new large hydroelectric power projects.

In contrast, growing demand for efficient and competitive biofuels has resulted in an ambitious vision to focus the future of electricity generation in Brazil more on biomass. Sugarcane ethanol production yields a very large mass of waste, called bagasse, which is used to (co-)generate electricity. An initial step in the EPE's bio-electricity vision was the recent auction of 7.8GW of biopower: more than 118 sugarcane factories capable of generating excess green electricity ready to be fed into the national grid, registered to participate in the auction (previous post).

According to the National Energy Evaluation, the current situation looks as follows (table, click to enlarge): ethanol and pulp accounted for 16% of Brazil’s total energy output in 2007, up from 14.5% the previous year. Hydroelectric power remained essentially stable at 14.7%, down 0.1 percentage points from 2006. Oil and derivatives retained the top spot with 36.7% of output, down from the 2006 level of 37.8%. Bioenergy has thus become Brazil's second largest primary energy source:
energy :: sustainability :: ethanol :: sugarcane :: biomass :: bioenergy :: efficiency :: hydroelectricity :: Brazil ::
Overall, the Brazilian demand for all forms of energy grew 5.9% in 2007, totaling 239.4 million tonnes of oil equivalent (toe). The rate of growth for energy demand was greater than the growth in the Brazilian economy (5.4%).

Brazil's sustainable energy mix might hold the future for many African countries. Not less than 25 countries there have a very large land and agroecological resource base that allows for the production of highly efficient energy crops, like sugarcane or sorghum.

With oil and coal prices at record highs, and other, less-cost effective renewables like wind or solar not being capable of providing reliable baseloads, biomass may become the most important form of primary energy on the African continent.

References:
EPE: Cana-de-açúcar já é a segunda fonte primária de energia no Brasil [*.Pdf] - May 8, 2008

Biopact: Brazil's biomass electricity auction attracts 118 factories with 7.8GW capacity - February 22, 2008

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Oil price 'may hit $200' - developing countries face collapse

Oil prices have risen 25% in the last four months and by an incredible 400% from 2001. Goldman Sachs energy strategist Argun Murti now warns that all parameters point to the occurence of a 'super-spike' past $200 in six months to two years' time. He joins OPEC's very own chief, who recently uttered the same frightening words.

Murti correctly predicted three years ago - when oil was about $55 a barrel - that it would pass $100, which it reached for the first time in January of this year.

Current oil prices - benchmark US light crude passing the $122 mark for the first time on Tuesday - are having destructive effects on all productive economic sectors of the oil importing least developed countries (LDCs). Of the 47 poorest countries in the world, 38 are net importers of oil, and 25 are fully dependent on imports.

Back when oil stood at a 'very low' $60, the United Nations already warned for the 'devastating' effects (previous post):

Recent oil price increases have had devastating effects on many of the world's poor countries, some of which now spend as much as six times as much on fuel as they do on health. Others spend twice the money on fuel as they do on poverty alleviation. And in still others, the foreign exchange drain from higher oil prices is five times the gain from recent debt relief.

Each dollar increase in the price of oil directly affects LDCs' capacity to provide health care, education, and basic public and social services to their people. Agriculture, the mainstay of most of these economies, is badly hit and farmers can be thrown back into subsistence farming and hunger when oil hits a treshold that makes agricultural production and marketing difficult. All other productive sectors of LDC-economies depend on affordable fuels.

The African Development Bank, writing with a 'high' oil price of $70 per barrel in mind, added some other depressing micro- and macro-economic prospects for African economies:

• the risk of hyper-inflation, including steep increases in the price of food and basic staples; significant increases in real interest rates; the incapacity to introduce non-inflationary monetary policies
• declining domestic and foreign investment
  
• increasing unemployment, with the poor hit first and hardest
• decreased capacity to trade, as foreign currency pools dry up
• the destruction of the effect of debt relief efforts
• the erosion of the state budget, both at the revenue and the expenditure side; revenues decline as the profitability of businesses decreases

Oil at $60-70 per barrel (let alone at today's price of $120) has catastrophic consequences for poor countries. But what would happen with oil at $200? At that level, development as such in LDCs would simply grind to a halt with the formal economy risking outright collapse. Civil strife and state collapse are likely in countries with weak institutions.

So what can poor countries do? Not much, because the problem is that there are no feasible alternatives to liquid fuel products, and that demand for these fuels is price inelastic. Highly developed countries can often consume a bit less or draw on strategic reserves, but the energy intensive countries of the poor South do not have this capacity. They can invest in biofuels - and most of these countries have a very large potential to produce them in a sustainable and highly competitive manner - but projects may take years to come online.

The recent food riots, already the result of record oil prices (and much less the result of biofuels) might just be a prelude to what's to come. Maybe the doom-scenarios sketched so often by 'Peak Oil' analysts will begin to play out after all. And they will hit the poorest countries first.
ethanol :: biodiesel :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: peak oil :: collapse :: Africa ::

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Nielsen ranks Biopact in top-3 sustainability blogs

Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, recently released findings from its “Sustainability through the Eyes and Megaphones of the Blogosphere” report, which examined consumer attitudes about personal and corporate responsibility towards the environment. It ranks Biopact as the third most important blog about sustainability, behind Treehugger.com and WorldChanging.com.

According to the report, protecting the environment has become increasingly important to consumers, with online buzz around sustainability growing 50 percent in 2007. While early in the year discussion was dominated by the topic of global warming, bloggers progressively addressed a wider variety of green-related issues, with a particular emphasis on personal action such as recycling, avoiding excess packaging, and carpooling.

Even so, global warming remained the No. 1 topic among sustainability bloggers in 2007, followed by renewable energy/alternative fuels; resource conservation; recycle/reuse; carbon emissions; pollution; organics; toxins; packaging/plastic; and transportation (hybrids, carpooling).

Note: Topics are ranked by number of messages among sustainability bloggers from 1/1/07 to 12/31/07, with the Buzz trend reflecting change from 1/1/07 to 12/31/07.

“As in many sectors, consumers are becoming increasingly vocal online about the issue of sustainability,” said Jessica Hogue, research director, Nielsen Online. “Blogger attention to related issues like pollution, toxins and sustainable agriculture reveal an important intersection between personal health and environmental wellness.”

Top Sustainability Blogs
So if you're a marketer eager to start listening to this conversation online about sustainability, where should you begin? Start with the most popular sustainability blogs online.

Nielsen ranked Discovery Channel's TreeHugger.com No. 1 with 4,612 messages related specifically to sustainability in 2007. Worldchanging and Biopact took the No. 2 and 3 spots, with 738 and 722 sustainability messages, respectively (of course, quantity is no metric for quality, but hey, for once, we don't care!). Note that Biopact is (was) entirely a volunteer effort and does not (did not) receive any financial or other type of support from anyone:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: agriculture :: climate change :: blogosphere :: green journalism ::

Greenwashing: A Failed Corporate Strategy
The report also notes that not only are consumers looking for practical steps they can take to reduce personal environmental impact, they are also holding corporations accountable for action and results. Bloggers are quick to condemn “greenwashing” – when they suspect companies misrepresent their environmental impact with aggressive PR campaigns – as spurious attempts to be “green.” Consumers expect consistency in action and authentic and transparent messaging.

Nielsen Online analysis showed that similar environmental initiatives can provoke different consumer responses depending on a company’s reputation and history. For example, in the retail sector, while Wal-Mart and Target both introduced reusable shopping bags, some consumers voiced skepticism towards Wal-Mart because of its association with environmental, labor, and health care issues. Although in general consumers were supportive of Wal-Mart’s reusable bags, some were still dubious of the retailer’s intent.

“When it comes to the environment, consumers are insisting on both transparency and consistency from the corporations they patronize,” said Hogue. “Consumer support depends on action as well as perceived sincerity and commitment.”

References:
Nielsen Buzzmetrics: Online Consumers Call for Greater Transparency in Strategies for Environmental Sustainability, According to Nielsen Online - March 31, 2008.

AdAge: Do People Care About Your 'Green' Message? Yes - March 31, 2008.

Environmental Leader: Sustainability Buzz Up 50% In 2007 - April 1, 2008.

MarketinVox: Environmental Action, Sustainability Hot Blogosphere Topics - April 2, 2008.

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Biopact creates the Biochar Fund

Ideas and people come and go, debates shift and opportunities change. Over the past years Biopact has been instrumental in getting a simple message across: if biofuels are going to produced, it would be interesting to take the potential of the Global South into account. The message has added a perspective to a debate that has kept growing more complex and controversial. Biofuels for transport offer certain social and environmental advantages when they are produced in a smart way. But their (indirect) effects can just as well become so problematic that they outweigh these benefits.

In order to help small farmers in Africa - which has always been our prime goal - there are perhaps more elegant and straightforward strategies. One of these consists of assisting poor farmers in fragile environments to change a destructive land use technique that keeps them in poverty into one that presents tangible benefits.

Some 300 to 500 million farmers in the tropics rely on shifting cultivation and practise a type of 'slash-and-burn' farming. This land use strategy allows them to grow crops on soils for a few years, after which they have to move on because the nutrient-poor, acidic tropical soils get depleted very rapidly. All the while, they contribute to deforestation, out of necessity.

There is a new land use strategy that could make more sense. It is based on biochar - charcoal obtained from the pyrolysis of biomass - used as a soil amendment. Biochar cures unhealthy soils and makes them fertile. This way, slash-and-burn farmers can halt deforestation, and grow more food and biomass. Biochar also doubles as a carbon sink for which credits are available.

If biochar is used as the central ingredient of a holistic development approach, it offers an opportunity to help end hunger amongst communities at the forest margins, it can help slow deforestation, it may contribute in a significant way to reducing emissions from land use change and it can be coupled to renewable energy production amongst people currently without access to modern energy services.

The Biopact sees an interesting opportunity in the concept. This is why it has created the Biochar Fund, a small social profit organisation aimed at rethinking ways to tackle the interrelated issues of hunger, deforestation, energy poverty and climate change.

By improving access to farm inputs, knowledge and output markets, the Biochar Fund helps the poorest of the poor end hunger temporarily. To consolidate the results, the nutrient-poor, acidic soils are cured with biochar. Farming communities are then connected to carbon markets to be compensated for their carbon storage effort. Healthy and fertile soils make the use of modern inputs worthwile. In a later phase the rural communities are assisted in producing biochar in efficient, micro-scale pyrolysis units that simultaneously generate electricity.

The small fund focuses on rural communities at the forest frontier in the Congo Basin. The unique ecosystems of this vast tropical rainforest stretch accross six of the poorest countries in the world: the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Cameroon.

By the end of this year, the Biochar Fund will begin to conduct trials amongst poor rural communities at two contrasting sites to investigate the feasibility of the concept. If successful, the system will be expanded fairly swiftly. This is possible because it finances itself and is relatively easy to implement by even the poorest farmers.

The potential benefits of our intervention range from the very local - improved food security and access to modern energy services - to the global - reduced deforestation and associated emissions.

With the launch of the Biochar Fund, the small group of dedicated people behind the Biopact has a new mission and lots of work to do. For this reason, this website will no longer be updated. The Biopact team wants to thank everyone who has taken an interest in bioenergy and biofuels, especially in the context of the developing world.

The debate over biofuels must continue and analyses of the longterm impacts must be strengthened and deepened. We urge all the participants in this debate to look at biofuels as an agricultural opportunity that may offer important benefits to poorer countries. But at the same time, we urge caution, because a whole series of preconditions must be met first before this force for good can emerge.

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Austria opens first cooperative biomass service station

The Austrian state of Carinthia, in the south of the country, has opened its first cooperatively managed service station for biomass. 7000 small farmers are members of the energy cooperative, which collects residual wood and turns it into finished products ready for combustion in large biomass power stations and small heating units. Biomass users come to "tank" at the station. The collection point is located in Feistritz/Drau and offers technical assistance as well as machines to the farmers. By cooperating, the farmers achieve scale, a stable supply, and a new market which allows them to increase incomes by an estimated 15 percent.

The idea behind the energy cooperative is simple: hundreds of small farmers team up to supply wood to the station, which turns it into dry wood chips that are bought by several big customers. The initiative emerged out of the idea to make sustainable exploitation of local forest and woodland resources more attractive again.

Many farmers had lost interest for years, because there was no market. The emerging bioenergy sector signaled a change. But individual farmers did not see much opportunity as single suppliers: investing in heavy equipment, drying and storage facilities when you only have a limited raw material resource base does not make sense. Last autumn, an existing farmers' cooperative therefor launched the idea of a collectively supplied "biomass station" that takes away the investment risk by distributing it over many farmers. And it became a success: hundreds now participate as suppliers.

The cooperative had a bit of luck too. A heavy storm caused severe damage to woodlands in the region, which prompted the local authorities to draw on private resources to clean up the wood. The cooperative stepped in, and more farmers joined. Now the Feistritz service point guarantees a secure, year round biomass supply, which is a precondition for any large power generator to use the resource.

The simple farmer cannot compete with his small quantities. But with our organization we offer scale and thus we can help him get access to a much larger market. This guarantees his survival. - Josef Steiner, Maschinenring

Biomass is seen as an attractive energy source, because not only is it renewable, it has become the least costly of all fuels. But biomass is more than wood. Biomass fuels consist of raw wood that has undergone a simple transformation process: it is collected, dried, stored and turned into chips or pellets. It is this seemingly insignificant transformation that makes all the difference to the farmers. It adds value and opens the market. Individual farmers often don't have a large enough wood supply to warrant investment in the machines needed to carry out these processes.

The farmers now have the possibility to create value with the machines offered by the cooperative. They do no merely sell wood, they supply a true fuel for energy, namely wood chips with a high heating value. - Christoph Aste, managing director of the cooperative

The cooperative rents out heavy equipment to farmers who use it to haul fallen trees and branches out of their forests and woodlands. A specialised team of four men comes with the machinery.

The biomass fuel station is located at the site of a sawmill that was redesigned for its new function. This means the necessary logistical infrastructure is in place. The station now supplies fuel to both large and small customers. It covers the yearly heating needs of 4,000 households as well as the biomass supplies of several large district heating plants:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: wood chips :: supply chain :: district heating :: cooperative :: Austria ::

After observing the operation at the biomass fuel station for three months, the city of Villach was impressed and decided to become the first big customer. Its large thermal plant, operated by the Kärntner Restmüllverwertungs GmbH, uses the biomass energy to feed its long-distance district heating grid, which supplies hot water and heat to households in the city.

In Villach we successfully created a hybrid system that combines biomass, natural gas and waste heat to heat the city. The transition of parts of the city's energy supplies to biomass is a meaningful alternative to its reliance on natural gas. This combination is possible in other cities in Carinthia. - Christoph Aste

The cooperative itself operates several heating systems and now hopes to double its fuel output over the next two years. Farmers who are members and supply raw wood can then expect an estimated 15 percent increase in their incomes.

But to meet this goal, the biomass cooperative must actively create a new regional market for bioenergy. It hopes to do this by convincing municipalities, businesses, and public organisations with large energy needs, such as schools, to heat with wood chips. The robust supply chain, the participation of hundreds of local farmers, and the fuel's competitive edge might make this possible.

Hat tip to Günther!

References:
Kaernten ORF: Erste Biomasse-Tankstelle in Kärnten - February 10, 2008.

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Scientists discover genetics of nitrogen fixation in plants - potential implications for future agriculture

Some plants have the capacity to grow well in nutrient poor soils without additional fertilizers. This is the result of a very efficient symbiosis between either nitrogen fixing bacteria that interact with the plant's roots, or between these roots and mycorrhizal fungi. These symbioses allow plants to strongly improve their uptake of nitrogen, phosphorus and water. Now a team of French and German scientists has discovered [*.pdf French/Spanish] the common genetic mechanism at work that allows the elements of the symbiosis to interact.

Their findings might make it possible to transfer the nitrogen fixing capacity of legumes to a wide range of crops that do not have this ability, including maize and rice. Ultimately, this could lead to a massive reduction of inorganic fertilizer consumption. The discovery is reported in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team of researchers from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and the University of Munich have been collaborating for years on the project. They found that one of the genetic elements of nitrogen fixing plants called SymRK (Symbiosis Receptor Kinase), used by leguminous plants (pea, alfalfa...) to join Rhizobia bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi, is also essential for the establishment of the symbiosis between the tropical tree Casuarina - an actinorhizal plant that thrives in poor sandy soils - and nitrogen fixing bacteria belonging to the genus Frankia. This new understanding unlocks the keys to the genetics of the nitrogen fixing capacity of plants, and could make it possible to apply the mechanism to the development of crops that massively cut back on fertilizers.

Inorganic fertilizers are an essential but expensive input for farmers. World wide consumption of nitrogen fertilizers was around 130 million tonnes in 2007. Phosphate demand stood at around 37 million ton. Prices are rising steadily because of high oil and gas prices. Some crops like maize require large applications that have to be repeated each growing seaon. Particular cropping systems - such as growing nitrogen-fixing crops after other crops - can limit the need for fertilizers marginally and temporarily.

But what if crops like maize and rice could be designed in such a way that they do not require any additional inorganic fertilizers? That would revolutionise agriculture on a global scale and would greatly limit the different types of pollution and ecosystem damage caused by artificial fertilizers. The discovery of the genetic basis for the efficient N2-fixing capacity in plants might make the development of such crops possible.

The association between mycorrhizal fungi and plants is estimated to be more than 400 million years old. It helped plants colonize the land. Today, the symbiosis can be found in more than 80% of the all plant species. More recently, approximately 60 million years ago, a new symbiosis developed between soil bacteria known as rhizobia, and leguminous plants, which granted them the unique capacity to nourish themselves by extracting nitrogen from the air to use it as a nutrient.

Rhizobia establish themselves inside the root nodules of legumes, where they transform nitrogen into ammonium that can be directly taken up by the plant. In return, the plant provides to the micro-organisms with nutrients in the form of complex glucides:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: agriculture :: fertilizer :: nitrogen fixation :: mycorrhizae :: soil microbes :: symbiosis :: molecular biology :: genetics ::

Unlocking the mechanism
For several years, scientists have tried to unlock the genetic mechanisms responsible for these mutually beneficial relations between plants and bacteria on the one hand, and bacteria and fungi on the other.

Already in 2000, IRD researchers discovered a genetic signaling mechanism common to the way in which legumes interact with rhizobia and to the way in which mycorrhizae work. The symbioses use a common genetic element baptized SymRK. This gene intervenes in recognizing Nod factors - the signaling molecules that are crucial for the rhizobia to establish themselves in root nodules.

So-called actinorhizal plants have formed a second group of plants that have acquired the capacity to benefit from a symbiosis with another type of nitrogen-fixing bacteria called Frankia. The genetic mechanisms of these plants' relationship with their symbiont has not been studied in-depth so far.

The actinorhizal plants can be found in disturbed environments, such as volcanic soils or mining terrain and in soils starved of nitrogen, such as sandy moraines.

There are approximately 260 species of actinorhizal plants distributed over 24 genera and 8 families of flowering plants. To study the symbiosis, the French and German researchers were particularly interested in the tropical Casuarina tree, better known under the name filao. Casuarinas thrive at tropical beaches, in poor sandy soils.

Using techniques from molecular biology, the scientists looked for the sequence coding the SymRK gene within the Casuarina genome. Once they identified the gene, they wanted to find out whether it is again responsible for the establishment of the symbiosis between filao and the Frankia bacteria.

To find out, they developed transgenic plants in which the expression of the SymRK gene was strongly reduced. They then compared the capacity of these plants to form symbiotic nodules on their roots with that of wild plants. According to these analyses, the plants whose SymRK gene's potency was reduced, produced half the number of root nodules compared with the control plants. The formation of mycorrhizae also strongly decreased compared with the wild Casuarina trees.

These results indicate that the reduction of the expression of the SymRK gene, in filao, causes a major reduction in its capacity to fix atmospheric nitrogen as well as a reduction of its aptitude to form mycorrhizae. More generally, these conclusions highlight the fact that there is a common genetic element at work in nitrogen fixing plants that seems essential for the installation of the three types of symbiotic associations utilizing bacteria (Rhizobium and Frankia) or mycorrhizal fungi.

Implications
A better comprehension of these genetic mechanisms could contribute, in the years to come, to the development of techniques to transfer the genetic material necessary for the nitrogen fixing capacity to crops that are unable to perform this task, such as cereals like maize and rice.

Whereas rice does establish a symbiotic relation with a mycorrhizal fungus, it is indeed inapt to develop nitrogen fixing nodules. However, by modifying its genome in such a way that rice plants too are capable of feeding off the atmospheric nutrient, it would become possible to significantly limit the nitrogen fertilizer needs in rice cultivation. This would have major economic and environmental effects: reduced production costs for farmers world wide and less pollution from nitrogen runoff.

If the N2-fixing capacity is transferred to all the major grain crops currently produced, world agriculture would be transformed forever.

Translated for Biopact by Laurens Rademakers.

Image: Frankia is genus of nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live in the soil and have a symbiotic relationship with many plants. By focusing on the genome of Frankia, French and German scientists discovered a genetic mechanism responsible for root-fungal and root-bacterial symbioses. Credit: MicrobeWiki.

References:
Hassen Gherbi, Katharina Markmann, Sergio Svistoonoff, Joan Estevan, Daphné Autran, Gabor Giczey, Florence Auguy, Benjamin Péret, Laurent Laplaze, Claudine Franche, Martin Parniske, and Didier Bogusz, "SymRK defines a common genetic basis for plant root endosymbioses with arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi, rhizobia, and Frankia bacteria", Published online on March 3, 2008, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0710618105,

IRD: Un mécanisme génétique universel découvert chez les plantes fixatrices d’azote [*.pdf] - Fiche n°288 - Février 2008

AlphaGalileo: Un mecanismo genético universal descubierto en las plantas fijadoras de nitrógeno - March 7, 2008.

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