It is not that we should sit back and breathe a sigh of relief, stopping work, especially in education and awareness campaigns about the need to achieve a substantial reduction in anthropogenic GHG emissions, but the paper produced by Professor Angelo Gurgel and colleagues from the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy with the collaboration of strategists from Shell, brings to light valuable data and information compiled from highly credible sources showing that the world still has a large area of land that can be used for the production of both food and bioenergy and renewable energy sources.
In Brazil, although better sustainable practices and combating illegal deforestation and burning are always necessary and welcome, we must remain vigilant regarding alarmism that land use for agricultural activities poses threats to food supply and energy generation. Protectionist moves by producers in competing jurisdictions should be analyzed with due caution.
Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) such as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) are mentioned and recommended several times in the document. In our view, this places Brazil at the forefront of the international scenario, given the good practices increasingly adopted by our Agribusiness, such as increased productivity per occupied hectare, multiple harvests, seed improvement technology, Embrapa investments and research, etc.
It is important to note that the scientific publication in the link is based on computational models from MIT, but also on contributions from the IEA, IPCC, BNEF and the Sky 2050 Scenario , from the Shell Scenario Team. This is further evidence that issues of this complexity require great collaboration between Academia, Governments, Multilateral Institutions and the private sector.
The importance of this issue for us is that in 2020, according to the February 2023 report “Carbon Neutrality by 2050: Scenarios for an efficient transition in Brazil” , in the context of the Energy Transition Program of CEBRI, EPE, IDB and Cenergia, we emitted 2.16 billion tCO2eq, being among the main global emitters. However, our emissions are not concentrated in the energy sector (in which the presence of renewables is almost 50% of the matrix), but in changes in land use, such as deforestation and agriculture, which represent 73% of the country's emissions, while worldwide it is the energy sector that causes 76% of emissions.
We recommend the study:
______________________________________________________________________
About the author:
Carlos Peixoto is the co-founder and CEO of H2helium, a consultancy dedicated to the renewable energy and low-carbon hydrogen markets. He is currently associated with the British Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Brazil – Britcham, the Rio de Janeiro Commercial Association – ACRJ, the Brazilian Hydrogen Association – ABH2 and the Brazilian Carbon Capture and Storage Association – CCS Brasil.
Kommentarer