Future trends for biojet fuel and biosuccinic acid production in São Paulo state, Brazil

Abstract

Within the context of growing concerns about oil supply security and greenhouse gas emissions, both the aviation and petrochemical sector are exploring alternative feedstocks for the production of jet fuel and chemicals, respectively. In that light, research into bio-based jet fuels (biojet fuel) and bio-based chemicals has been accelerating in recent years. Yet, commercialization of their production is rather difficult. Despite substantial research in production technologies for biojet fuel and biosuccinic acid, commercial production of these products is still very minimal. Therefore, a research was executed with the objective to analyze how government policies affect commercialization of biojet fuel and biosuccinic acid, within the context of sugarcane competition and international trade and to explore alternative policies. This research was operationalized in the following research question: “What set of policies can be recommended to increase the production of biojet fuel and biosuccinic acid, within the context of national and international competitition between the road transport and sugar market? The methodology used to answer the main research question is a blend of institutional analysis and agent-based modelling and simulation and was used to gain better understanding of how actors’ behaviors and interactions give rise to the emerging key variables of interest that can be observed at the macro systems level. The agent-based model that was developed was used for policy exploration in which policies were explored that might be able to increase the production of biojet fuel and biosuccinic acid in the period of 2015 until 2030. From this analysis, multiple conclusions were drawn: (1) actors’ behaviors and interactions give rise to a dynamic sugarcane market; (2) sugarcane pricing and allocation are key factors in the emergence of biojet fuel and biosuccinic acid production; (3) strong national and international competition with the sugar and ethanol market is likely to be an unstable context for biojet fuel or biosuccinic acid to be commercialized; (4) current government ethanol-support policies hinder commercialization and (5) 2G bagasse-to-biojet technology showed positive results for biojet fuel demand satisfaction.