RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 7 (IPS) – “I don’t know of a more sustainable technology for the transformation of society than biogas,” says Professor Alex Enrich-Prast, an activist for this energy alternative with a highly diversified and decentralized expansion in Brazil.
It is not only a renewable and clean energy source, obtained through the anaerobic decomposition of organic waste, he argued before entrepreneurs and stakeholders gathered at the 11th National Biogas Forum on October 2 and 3 in Rio de Janeiro.
Biogas, he added, is also key to the world’s ability to deal with waste and garbage in general, a problem that punishes humanity and makes this energy circular.
Biologist Enrich-Prast, a researcher in this field at Brazilian universities and at Linkoping University in Sweden, surprised his audience by saying that “biogas in Brazil is more relevant for biofertilizer production than for energy.”
In Europe, the expansion of this energy source responds to the ‘geopolitical strategy’ to reduce dependence on Russian gas on a continent whose temperatures require heating. The war in Russia-invaded Ukraine brought the drama to light.
In the case of Brazil, a tropical agricultural power, the dependence on imported fertilizers, which account for more than 80% of national consumption, is striking, the professor explains.
Since Russia and Ukraine are major suppliers of fertilizers, the war has led to an increase in domestic production, which will be partially covered by waste whose biodigestion produces both biogas and an improved fertilizer, which removes gases. The resulting fertilizer, which contains micronutrients, can produce a better fertilizer than chemical fertilizers.
In addition to the geopolitical and economic risks, imported fertilizers are of fossil origin, undermining the low-carbon agriculture that Brazil is trying to promote as part of its climate change mitigation goals.
The high costs are the stumbling block
“The difficulty is the cost. Biofertilizers are still more expensive than fossil or mineral fertilizers, and agriculture is not prepared to pay that price,” says Renata Isfer, president of the Brazilian Biogas and Biomethane Association (Abiogás), the promoter of the forum, says so.
Technological advances and the scale of production could reduce costs, but the environmental demands of the global market could lead to a faster path to achieving more sustainable and less polluting production, she acknowledged.
In any case, “biogas is crucial. There will be no human colonization on Mars without biogas there,” said Enrich-Prast, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who is currently on loan to his counterpart in São Paulo.
In the middle of his teaching, the specialist promotes cooperation between Brazil and Sweden. He founded the company together with other researchers Inova Biogaswith the aim of contributing to energy productivity and the quality of biofertilizers.
He appreciates the experience of Europe, where biogas, which after refining becomes biomethane equivalent to natural gas, is now an important energy input, having explored much of its potential.
In Brazil it is an emerging industry, which still lacks public policies, investments, proprietary technologies and regulations, which is developed through private, sectoral and experimental initiatives and which designs an expansion through local arrangements, in a territorial decentralization and through productive ecosystems.
Segmentation
“Biogas follows a segmentation by type of substrate. The business model for sugarcane differs from that of pig farming, dairy cattle, basic sanitation and other crops,” summarized Cícero Bley Junior, an icon of the sector, currently working at his consultancy firm. Bley Energias.
“Everything is biogas, but biogas is only part of the process and operations,” from the activities that generate the substrate or input for biodigestion to the biomethane used in various types of industry, in trucks and other vehicles, he said .
Bley, founder, first president and current president emeritus of Abiogás, stimulated the biogas movement in southwestern Brazil while he was chief renewable energy inspector at Itaipu Binacional (2003-2016), the hydroelectric power plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay on the border between the two countries.
A business model is emerging around the agro-industrial cooperative Primatoin Toledo, a municipality of 150,000 inhabitants in the west of the southern state of Paraná and the country’s largest pork producer, where Bley currently focuses his work.
For the transport of animal feed alone, the cooperative has 70 trucks, each traveling an average of 200 kilometers per day on diesel.
The ongoing plan to replace fossil fuels with biomethane would result in huge cost savings and an 89% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
Local arrangements are emerging or could emerge anywhere in the country, with an abundance of biomass, from the melon-producing export area in the northeastern state of Alagoas to another nearby fishing community that grows and consumes cassava, to the heart of the Amazon with many macrophytic aquatic plants, he said.
For the time being, the production of biogas and biomethane is mainly concentrated in older landfills and in recent years in sugar cane ethanol factories.
Local production and consumption
One of these, Cocal, in the west of the southern state of São Paulo, supplies part of its biomethane to the gas market in three nearby cities. For this purpose Nectawhich distributes natural gas throughout most of the state, has built a local pipeline network.
This is also planned to supply a ceramics cluster with 16 factories in Santa Gertrudes, another small city in São Paulo with 24,000 inhabitants. But this is not the priority Comgasthe gas distributor in the east of the state of São Paulo, which includes Santa Gertrudes.
A major problem in the ceramics sector: the city’s air pollution has been reduced by the adoption of natural gas as an energy input, instead of the previous use of coal and firewood, said David Penna, the company’s technical manager.
The current priority is to replace diesel consumption by trucks on the road with biomethane, which is considered equivalent and does not require technological adjustments to vehicles.
Studying the flow of trucks on the roads with statistics is now one of the tasks of several natural gas distribution companies to identify priority locations for future filling stations.
But these are long-term plans, because replacing diesel trucks with gas trucks takes time, as these vehicles have a long lifespan and the automotive industry is slowly increasing production of gas trucks, Penna said during the Biogas Forum.
(Re)energyan energy transition company, part of the electricity generation and distribution group Energisa, has also embraced biogas, after focusing on solar photovoltaics.
It is installing a plant in Campos Novos, in the center of the southern state of Santa Catarina, Brazil’s largest pork exporter, to generate 25,000 cubic meters of biomethane per day from waste from the surrounding meat and dairy industries.
It solves the waste problem of the local industry, but the focus is on the production of biofertilizers through composting, according to Roberta Godoi, vice president of Energy Solutions at (Re)energisa.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
