The potential of a bioeconomy to reduce Brazilian GHG emissions towards 2030: a CGE‐based life cycle analysis

Brazil is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world with most of its emissions coming from the land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) sector. New commitments have been set by the Paris Agreement and are reflected in the country's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). The Brazilian NDC has three main pillars to reduce emissions: increasing the share of biomass in the total primary energy supply to 18%, reducing deforestation, and achieving 45% of renewable energy in the energy mix. It is important to enlarge the share of biomass in the Brazilian economy, but it is also important to assess the potential impacts on deforestation in order to set the right strategy eventually. This study is thus an effort to investigate the contributions of a biobased economy to reduce Brazilian emissions, considering the broader concept of the bioeconomy, using biomass for energy, chemicals, and materials. To satisfy the objectives of the project, especially those related to its interest in economy‐wide changes in feedstock (from fossil to biobased), computable general equilibrium modeling (CGE) was chosen as the basic methodology integrated with an economic input–output life cycle analysis (EIO‐LCA). Results show that the impacts of the bioeconomy scenarios are positive but not sufficiently high to reduce the estimated emissions drastically. Emissions by the energy sector produce the highest reductions (7.5%) but the 12% increase in the LULUCF sector offsets those reduction142265285FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO - FAPESP2013/50347–