Brazil: Agriculture has untapped potential for large-scale biogas

Brazilian agribusiness has enormous untapped potential for development projects. biogas on a large scale, with a variety of opportunities to monetize the renewable fuel through use in their own operations or sale to third parties, industry executives said Thursday.

In an event organized by BTG Pactual, the executive director of the Urca Energia group, Marcel Jorand, said that he could see the growth of green fuel projects produced from agribusiness raw materials, a segment that contributes only 20% of the volume of biomethane in the country.

“I think (…) the party has just begun, the good is yet to come, and that comes from agribusiness”Jorand said during the event, citing data from the Abiogás association, which estimates that 90% of Brazil’s biogas potential is associated with agribusiness.

Biogas is a renewable fuel obtained from urban organic waste, such as that deposited in landfills, and agricultural. Its main uses are electricity generation and conversion into biomethane, a renewable substitute for natural gas.

According to Jorand, Urca Energia “born” with a project to treat waste from pig farming in Mato Grosso and seeks to develop new companies to help producers treat their waste properly and create additional income.

“Although later we have turned more towards landfills, we want to return to the place where we were born, which is agriculture”said the executive.

Adecoagro is also investing to increase its biogas production at a plant in Minas Gerais, where the company has a pilot project that uses sugarcane vinasse. “in nature” to generate renewable fuel, said Vice President Renato Pereira.

“Today we only use 3% stillage, and now we have a well-designed project to increase it and go from the normal 6,000 cubic meters to 110,000 cubic meters per day in the next three or four years.”

The company already fuels some of its vehicles with biomethane – a renewable fuel obtained after processing biogas and equivalent to natural gas – and could expand it in the future.

“The challenge is the appearance of new vehicles powered by biomethane, today we have many harvesters in the field, tractors, which do not yet have biomethane engines.”

For the executive president of UISA, José Fernando Mazuca, the biggest current challenge to stimulate the biogas and biomethane market in Brazil continues to be monetizing the “green attribute” of the products.

Other executives also pointed to the possibility of creating a “methane credit”which they say has much higher values ​​than carbon credits in some markets.

“What we have to show (to the large multinational groups) is that we do not compete with diesel and gasoline, (biomethane) is an environmental solution, avoids footprints and solves their problem,” said Jorand, from Urca Energía.

Source: Reuters