Global concern about climate change and the need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has placed biofuels in the spotlight. The energy transition and the adoption of biofuels have been one of the alternatives adopted by governments and other sectors of the economy to achieve their decarbonization commitments. However, there are scientific studies that dispute the ability of some biofuel pathways to reduce emissions when the GHG emissions associated with direct (LUC) and indirect land use change (ILUC) generated by the increased demand for biofuels production are included in the analysis. The production of corn ethanol has gained relevance in Brazil. The Brazilian corn ethanol production started in 2013, and a total of 4.5 billion liters of corn ethanol were produced by year in 2022/2023. It is expected that the Brazilian corn ethanol production will achieve between 8 and 13 billion liters by 2032.
While the impacts of the expansion of US corn ethanol production on global commodity markets, and on GHG emissions associated with direct and indirect land use changes have received intense scrutiny over at least 20 years, studies and models that measure the ILUC for second-crop corn ethanol in Brazil are still scarce and the process is not well understood. This is of significance as the corn ethanol industry in Brazil potentially has merits for positioning its product as a low carbon fuel and thus tap into increasingly important markets. This work will use a well-established model of global agricultural and biofuels market, the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development Long Run Land Use model (CARD LRLU) to evaluate the impacts of Brazilian corn ethanol on commodity prices, and land use change, needed for GHG emission evaluations. For this purpose, the model will be modified to explicitly incorporate the potential of intensification of corn production in Brazil through the expansion of the area planted with a second crop. The modeling system used will allow us to project expected impacts of an expansion of corn ethanol in Brazil on a series of variables of interest, taking into account feedback and interactions with the broader agricultural sector including all major crops, and livestock products.
We expect that many of the lessons learned while studying the environmental and in particular GHG emission impacts of the US corn ethanol expansion will also be useful for the Brazilian case, at least as a starting point for comparisons. In particular, we expect that the ability of Brazilian producers to expand corn production through intensification (double cropping) will reduce GHG emissions associated to direct and indirect land use change from ethanol production. Lessons from this work will inform policy about the potential needs to provide safeguards in that the expansion of corn ethanol production be conducted through higher proportions of lands being double cropped, as opposed to growing more second crops of corn through the expansion of both soybeans and corn. Limited agricultural land expansion has the potential to place Brazilian corn ethanol production on an advantageous position as a low carbon fuel.
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