Sergio Abranches

Brazilian state-owned financial institutions will finance research and development of cellulosic ethanol, reports the Brazilian daily newspaper Valor Econômico.

The National Development Bank, BNDES  and FINEP, the science and technology finance agency, will offer about R$ 1,1 billion (US$ 600 million) this year in subsidized loans, grants in aid and equity sharing to companies to develop pilot projects of cellulosic ethanol. There are already 14 business plans under consideration by the two financial agencies.

Brazil has a highly competitive sugarcane ethanol industry, but research on second generation biofuels has lagged behind. Ethanol companies are also facing mounting problems on their supply chain with falling productivity of sugarcane plantations. Extreme climate events have led to recurring harvest losses over the last years. Aging plantations have lower and falling productivity levels. There has been very little investment on plantation renewal over the last five years. Once a net exporter, Brazil has become a large ethanol importer. In 2011, the country imported about 1.1 billion liters of ethanol, mainly from the US, and this year estimates are it will have to import 1.7 to 2.0 billion liters. As crop yields will be around 10% lower in 2012 (they’ve been falling over the last four harvests) Brazil could end up by importing as much ethanol as it exports.

Second generation biofuels will allow greater production without competing with food crops. Brazilian cellulosic ethanol would help to increase production and productivity without demanding new areas for plantation. Brazil has at least two excellent sources for cellulosic ethanol: sugar cane straw, today burnt on the fields and doing severe harm to workers’ health and the environment, and eucalyptus offshoots left on the plantations’ sites after logging. Both have high cellulose content. Cellulosic ethanol production could increase ethanol production by at least 50% using straw and bagasse from existing sugarcane crops. Other agricultural leftovers and residues could also be used productively for cellulosic ethanol production further boosting the volume generated without increasing crop area. This would reduce the need for sugarcane plantations to expand over areas dedicated to other crops, thus becoming an indirect driver for deforestation and food insecurity.

The National Development Bank has also budgeted about R$ 2 billion (US$ 1.1 billion) to finance new biochemical products from sugarcane, and gasification of sugarcane bagasse to generate biofuels and plastics.

It is a good start, although investment on the development of second generation biofuels will demand far greater sums. The Brazilian government and biofuel companies have been neglecting R&D for second generation biofuels. The country is still under the risk of losing competitiveness and leadership on the future global biofuels markets. Brazilian competitive advantages on crop-based biofuel production comes more from the greater efficiency  of sugarcane’s photosynthesis, than from ethanol companies’ technical and managerial virtues. Now, the country will have public policies, public finance, and corporate programs supporting the development of second generation biofuel technology.

Crops that can cope with sudden fluctuations in the weather could be developed, thanks to recent discoveries about the survival mechanisms of plants. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh studying how tiny algae renew old or damaged cell proteins say their findings could be useful in developing crops suited to climates in which weather changes quickly.

They found that the speed at which protein renewal takes place determines how fast they can adapt to environmental changes, such as a sudden frost or drought.

“Until now, we knew that plants replaced their old and damaged proteins, but we had no idea how long this process took for individual proteins, or how this varied between different parts of the plant. Our findings will be useful in understanding more about how plants are programmed for survival,” says Sarah Martin of the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Systems Biology, who led the study.

Renewal rates vary between proteins according to their role and their location within cells. Proteins that carry out photosynthesis – the process that converts sunlight into energy – renew quickly because they are at risk of light damage. Conversely, proteins that protect DNA in plant cells are at little risk of damage, and renew slowly.

These findings could help breed crops incorporating proteins that respond quickly to changing conditions. Conversely, it could also assist development of high-yield crops in stable environments, where little adaptation to conditions is required.

Scientists made their discovery by developing a method to detect how quickly algae take up nitrogen – which is used to produce proteins – from their food. The study was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and just published in the Journal of Proteome Research.

Trees are dying in the Sahel, a region in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, and human-caused climate change is to blame, according to a new study led by a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Rainfall in the Sahel has dropped 20-30 percent in the 20th century, the world’s most severe long-term drought since measurements from rainfall gauges began in the mid-1800s,” said study lead author Patrick Gonzalez, who conducted the study while he was a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for Forestry. “Previous research already established climate change as the primary cause of the drought, which has overwhelmed the resilience of the trees.”

The study, to appear in the Journal of Arid Environments, was based upon climate change records, aerial photos dating back to 1954, recent satellite images and old-fashioned footwork that included counting and measuring over 1,500 trees in the field. The researchers focused on six countries in the Sahel, from Senegal in West Africa to Chad in Central Africa, at sites where the average temperature warmed up by 0.8 degrees Celsius and rainfall fell as much as 48 percent.

The Sahel is one of the poorest and most vulnerable regions in the world. Recurrent famines have already killed millions of people there. Amartya Sen, the renowned economist has a classic study on the Sahel famines, published in 1983, called “Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation” (Kindle Edition available). Gonzalez says that “people in the Sahel depend upon trees for their survival. Trees provide people with food, firewood, building materials and medicine.”

The Berkeley study found that one in six trees died between 1954 and 2002. In addition, one in five tree species disappeared locally, and indigenous fruit and timber trees that require more moisture took the biggest hit. Hotter, drier conditions dominated population and soil factors in explaining tree mortality, the authors found. Their results indicate that climate change is shifting vegetation zones south toward moister areas.

“In the western U.S., climate change is leading to tree mortality by increasing the vulnerability of trees to bark beetles,” said Gonzalez, who is now the climate change scientist for the National Park Service. “In the Sahel, drying out of the soil directly kills trees. Tree dieback is occurring at the biome level. It’s not just one species that is dying; whole groups of species are dying out.”

Other co-authors of the study are Compton J. Tucker, senior earth scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and Hamady Sy, country representative for Mauritania at the Famine Early Warning Systems Network. Funding from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey helped support this research.

Global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased by 49 per cent in the last two decades, shows study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

The article ‘Rapid growth in CO₂ emissions after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis’ was published online by Nature Climate Change yesterday. The study is a part of the Global Carbon Project, and shows that fossil fuel emissions increased by 5.9 per cent in 2010 and by 49 per cent since 1990 – the reference year for the Kyoto protocol. On average, fossil fuel emissions have risen by 3.1 per cent each year between 2000 and 2010 – three times the rate of increase during the 1990s. They are projected to continue to increase by 3.1 per cent in 2011.

Total emissions – which combine fossil fuel combustion, cement production, deforestation and other land use emissions – reached 10 billion tons of carbon in 2010 for the first time. Half of the emissions remained in the atmosphere, where CO₂ concentration reached 389.6 parts per million. The remaining emissions were taken up by the ocean and land reservoirs, in approximately equal proportions.

Last year’s high growth was caused by both emerging and developed economies. Rich countries continued to outsource part of their emissions to emerging economies through international trade. Contributions to global emissions growth in 2010 were largest from China, the United States, India, the Russian Federation and the European Union. Emissions from the trade of goods and services produced in emerging economies but consumed in the West increased from 2.5 per cent of the share of rich countries in 1990 to 16 per cent in 2010.

In the UK, fossil fuel CO₂ emissions grew 3.8 per cent in 2010 but were 14 per cent below their 1990 levels. However, emissions from the trade of goods and services grew from 5 per cent of the emissions produced locally in 1990 to 46 per cent in 2010 – overcompensating the reductions in local emissions. Emissions in the UK were 20 per cent above their 1990 levels when emissions from trade are taken into account.

“Global CO₂ emissions since 2000 are tracking the high end of the projections used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which far exceed two degrees warming by 2100,” said co-author Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and professor at the University of East Anglia. “Yet governments have pledged to keep warming below two degrees to avoid the most dangerous aspects of climate change such as widespread water stress and sea level rise, and increases in extreme climatic events.”

Glen Peters, of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Norway, and lead author said: “Many saw the global financial crisis as an opportunity to move the global economy away from persistent and high emissions growth, but the return to emissions growth in 2010 suggests the opportunity was not exploited.”

Sérgio Abranches

Emissions regulations effectively reduce acid rain says a new long-term study of acidic rainfall by researchers of the University of Illinois. The frequency and intensity of acid rain decreases as emissions fall.

The study was based on analysis for pollutants of weekly samples from more than 250 stations across the United States collected by the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, shows trends in acidic rainfall, widely known as acid rain, over 25 years, from 1984 to 2009. “This is the longest-term, widest-scale precipitation pollution study in the U.S.” said Christopher Lehmann, a researcher in the program, which is part of the Illinois State Water Survey at the U. of I. The study aimed at determining how trends in the pollution and the rain correlated back to emissions regulations. “We’re seeing regulations on emissions sources having direct and positive impact to reduce pollutants in rain.”

It is an important contribution to the appraisal of how effective the Environmental Protection Agency – EPA regulations have been. “You want to make sure that the regulations you put in place are effective, that they do what they were designed to do,” said David Gay, the coordinator of the deposition program. “That’s why we’re here. We spend a lot of money to promulgate regulations. There’s a lot of concern about their impact on industry. This study shows clear, significant evidence of the direct impact of regulation. The report attributes the decrease to the amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990 regulating emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, the gases that become sulfuric and nitric acid when mixed with rain water. Acidic precipitation – rain or snowfall with a pH value of 5.0 or less – decreased in both frequency and concentration over the 25-year span, says the report.

Acid rain has widespread effects not only on the ecosystem, but also on infrastructure and the economy. Polluted precipitation adversely affects forestry, fishing, agriculture and other industries. Acid also erodes structures, damaging buildings, roads and bridges.

“What goes up does come down. Rainfall chemistry directly correlates with air pollution. When we looked at the magnitude of the trend, we found it compared very well to the magnitude of the decrease in emissions reported by the EPA,” Lehmann said. “The trend is down, and we should celebrate that, but it’s still a problem. There is still progress to be made, and there are new regulations coming along to continue to reduce emissions of sulfur and nitrogen compounds,” he added.

Sérgio Abranches

Large photovoltaic projects will cost half the current price in a couple of years, says a report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. As the cost of generating electricity from the sun rivals coal-fueled plants, solar panel installations may grow strongly in the next two years, industry executives and analysts told Bloomberg News.

“We are already in this phase change and are very close to grid parity,” Shawn Qu, chief executive officer of Canadian Solar Inc. (CSIQ), said in an interview to Bloomberg News. “In many markets, solar is already competitive with peak electricity prices, such as in California and Japan.”

Chinese companies are making panels cheaper, fueled by better cell technology and more streamlined manufacturing processes. That’s making solar economical in more places and will put it in competition with coal, without subsidies, in the coming years, New Energy Finance said to Bloomberg News.

Installation of solar PV systems will almost double to 32.6 gigawatts by 2013 from 18.6 gigawatts last year, New Energy Finance estimates. Manufacturing capacity worldwide has almost quadrupled since 2008 to 27.5 gigawatts, and 12 gigawatts of production will be added this year. (Bloomberg)

China will double its solar capacity to around 2 gigawatts (GW) by the end of the year say reports by the local press quoted by Reuters. The solar feed-in tariff, the price of solar-generated electricity, could drop below 0.80 yuan for kilowatt-hour (kWh) (12.5 cents) by 2015, which would be on par with conventional coal-fired power tariffs by that time, according to a report by the Energy Research Institute, led by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), says Reuters.

I found this video of J. K. Rowling’s 2008 commencement speech at Harvard via a Tweet from @marshallroberts. I happened to have spent most of the afternoon thinking about the violence that is corrupting humanness, causing unimaginable suffering, besides taking human lives in Congo.

I’ve written a couple of posts here about Congo’s blood minerals. But my mind, my imagination and my empathy have been aroused today by the inspired piece Amy Ernst wrote for Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times On the Ground blog: Notes From a Young American in Congo: A Good Man…

@marshallroberts Tweet was

Question: How are empathy and imagination related? Let J.K. Rowling tell you: http://ow.ly/3AchX (new blog + video) #empathy

The link posted on the Tweet led me to John Marshall Roberts’ blog Persuasion Tools for Visionaries and the video of Rowland’s speech. I decided to embed it here on the hope that it makes the same impression on those who come here, it made on me and, I presume, on @marshallroberts.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

Sergio Abranches

After a fast-track approval of the climate change bill, its enabling legislation is deadlocked at the Civil Household. The bill was rushed through Congress for president Lula to arrive in Copenhagen with the law already signed. But without the enabling legislation it is useless, and emission reduction targets cannot be enforced.

The Civil Household filters and process all government proposals before they are taken to the President. While Chief of Civil Household, Presidential candidate Dilma Roussef commanded all aspects of government policy but foreign affairs with a very strong hand and an outstretched arm. She has never been very enthusiastic about climate change policies.

Sources who have been involved in the decision-making process told me that conflict among government representatives responding to different sectoral interests have become almost intractable. A majority among them resists mandating any carbon curbing action other than reducing deforestation. There is strong resistance to any emission reduction targeting for the industrial, energy, and transportation sectors.

There are several sources of veto to sectoral actions on climate change. The officials in charge of climate policy at the Ministry of Science and Technology are against any carbon reduction policy other than curbing deforestation. They claim Brazil already has a low carbon economy. Scientists who work at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), under the Ministry of Science and Technology umbrella, strongly disagree. They are among the most active advocates for fast and encompassing climate change regulation. The Development, Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture ministries also oppose adopting targeted sectoral actions. To them any delay on regulation would be welcome, especially in the pre-electoral and campaign seasons. It is obvious to anyone with a minimum knowledge of the Brazilian economy that it belongs to the high carbon family. It will move faster towards higher levels of carbon intensity, if nothing is done.

Since Dilma Roussef’s times the Civil Household has resisted climate change-oriented policies. The two first Environment ministers, Marina Silva and Carlos Minc, have always had to fight for their policies, often clashing with other ministers, and frequently failing to get them approved by the President.

In one of the fiercest confrontations around policies for the Amazon region, Marina Silva, now an opposition presidential bidder, has resigned. She was replaced by Carlos Minc who, through confrontation and concession, was able to get Lula’s approval to the policy now filed under the Copenhagen Accord.  Minc left the Ministry to run for the state of Rio de Janeiro’s House of Representatives.

The incumbent minister, Izabella Teixeira, does not have the leadership nor the experience required to break this deadlock. The present Chief of Civil Household also lacks expertise and leadership. Without President Lula’s direct intervention it is unlikely regulation would be adopted anytime before this year’s elections.

This places Brazil far behind its two major partners in the BASIC group, China and India. After the BASIC and President Obama brokered the Copenhagen Accord, both China and India have been very active in adopting new policies that would enable them to meet the targets they’ve registered on the Accord’s Annex.

Sergio Abranches

Connectivity as a driver of change and a tool to promote sustainability.I spent the last two days on a conference about innovative logistics: Future.log, International Forum for Innovation in Logistics. I did the keynote speech for the first session on “Sustainability in the Supply Chain”. The second session was about “Demand-led Supply Chain Management”. My keynote was about 21^st Century megatrends, and sustainability as a resulting imperative for business, societies, and governments. But I would like to share what I’ve learned, rather than what I’ve talked about.

One of the most interesting trends that emerged from the presentations on demand-led supply chain management was the importance of mobile shopping and mobile data sourcing as main factors of change in both contemporary and future logistics. And it was really striking to see that the iPhone was on every sentence about mobile resources. David Sanders, VP for Sales and Strategic Markets – Americas, of Sterling Commerce AT&T, said that the iPhone is becoming a major resource for obtaining data from demand patterns through consumers’ online shopping choices. And it begins to be more widely used to get managerial information down the supply chain. Steve Steuterman, research director at AMR Research, has also emphasized the use of iPhone as a critical trend that is deeply changing supply chain management. Sanders is even more thrilled with the possibilities of iPad: “the size of the screen allows a greater amount of real time online data to be displayed at the same time.”

What impressed me was the potential that connectivity through iPhone and iPad have as a tool to promote sustainable consumption and greening the supply chain. Data sourcing and feedback systems could be used to monitor the supply chain, improve traceability, control carbon emissions. Consumers can get comparative data on the carbon intensity of goods from different supply chains, and make their decisions, online, based on the results.

I argued that we are already surfing a tsunami of change that will eventually wipe out most of the professional, economic and business paradigms in use today. It will clear the way for the establishment of whole new paradigms. Change will, at the end, be more thorough and revolutionary than the transformation that led from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment marked a long wave of knowledge-creating change through differentiation, segmentation, and specialization of branches of the same trees. The great transformation we are starting to witness is marked by the convergence of different sciences, technologies, media. This convergence is making information and communication technologies ever more ubiquitous as enablers of change and tools for novel processes and practices.

After approving the climate change law the Brazilian government now has yet to approve the rules that will allow its enactment.

Sergio Abranches

It is an extensive and complex law with many stakeholders. During the legislative process a few amendments have improved it to some extent. One of them, for instance, has included the emissions reduction targets as a “voluntary contribution” from Brazil to the global fight against climate change.  There were also a few important setbacks, however. President Lula has vetoed three articles. One on constitutional grounds, the other two conceding to pressure from his Minister of Energy.

Lula vetoed the provision that the country should gradually abandon fossil fuels. As there was no time frame, nor any description of actions that should be taken to that end, it amounted to no more than a future policy indication. But the Minister feared that by maintaining it, an enabling decree could make provisions that would do harm to the fossil energy industry. He only accepted that priority should be given to renewable energy sources.

The Minister of Energy has also persuaded President Lula to veto article 10, that restricted government incentives to small hydropower plants, wind, solar, biomass and other alternative sources. He argued that it would impede incentives to large hydropower plants.

The veto damaged the economics of the new law, by removing the structure of incentives to promote non-fossil energy.

There is some room, however, for improvement and correction through carefully drafting the enabling decree. The law can only be enacted after this enabling legislation is published. It can de done through a series of presidential decrees. Presidential decrees are not reviewed by Congress and can be enforced immediately.

The battle around the enabling decree is about to begin. An official source has told me today that they will not try to write all enabling rules at once. They’ll selectively pick the issues and areas they deem to be the most important and try to set the rules to allow their prompt enforcement. Some issues are almost certain to be in this first batch, because they are instrumental to the implementation of the emissions reduction targets that will be offered as the Brazilian contribution to the Copenhagen Accord.

This strategy of partial enablement aims at reducing the scope of conflict of interest and infighting to prevent a decision-making paralysis.

Another source told me they’ll also work on other parts of the enabling legislation with a longer-term perspective, leaving the groundwork done for the next Administration, to take office on January 1^st ,2011.

People at the Environment and Science and Technology ministries want to expedite the approval of the enabling decree, because ministers and higher officials who will run for elective office on October elections will have to leave the government within the next two months. They want the same people who negotiated the Law of Climate Change to lead the deal on the enabling legislation. It is very likely that Lula will replace his political ministers by technical and managerial people who lack the political savvy to tackle the complex and contentious issues the decree will have to address.

A source told me the ideal timing would be to have the enabling legislation approved by right after Carnival.