Sergio Pacca

Energia eólica, geração de empregos e desenvolvimento sustentável

Wind power development in Brazil has experienced a long period of slow growth; however, projects contracted over the last three years might increase the current installed capacity by fivefold. This was the fastest growing clean energy technology over the last decade, bringing environmental and social benefits to several countries. Our work has determined direct and indirect job creation potential due to indigenous wind power deployment. About 195,000 jobs will be created up to 2020, out of which 70% direct, and most of them in construction, which has great local job creation potential. Therefore, wind power plays a major role in the sustainable development of the country.

Financing aspects of electricity saving's in Brasil

Programs regarding to energy saving in Brasil arised by the early 80s, from the concern with oil products consumption. The situation has changed and electricity is growing in importance when energy conservation is discussed.

How far can low-carbon energy scenarios reach based on proven technologies?

In recent years, nations, states and provinces have been proactively combating climate change, supported by the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) outcomes. In the meantime, several studies have evaluated regional strategies for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. Although these studies propose scenarios that meet the climate policy pledges, most of them are based on measures that have not been commercially demonstrated yet, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS). The aim of this work is to develop a low-carbon scenario for the energy sector in Sao Paulo, Brazil (whose emissions are significant at the regional and national level) until 2050 and to verify if a proven, technology-based approach meets the current policy goals. Although the analysis is based on a developing country, Sao Paulo state is the most developed region in Brazil. Consequently, the analysis presented in this work may be replicated in other regional settings, with distinct development stages, which demand increasing energy futures. In the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, energy demand increases 2.6% per year until 2050, and emissions consequently increase 2.8% per year, reaching 235 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (tCO2). If four alternatives proposed in the low-carbon (LC) scenario were implemented, 28% of the BAU emissions would be avoided. However, even with this LC scenario, Sao Paulo would not meet the state pledge, remaining 44% above the policy emission cap. This result means that more audacious measures are needed to achieve an effective result. Such measures must push the current technical, scientific, and industrial knowledge and may require a biodiesel share over 20% in diesel blend, extensive increases in renewable energy supply, CCS, and bioenergy associated with CCS. Finally, we suggest some key points to apply this analysis in other regions, considering their own energy mix.

Historical carbon budget of the Brazilian ethanol program

This work models the carbon neutralization capacity of Brazils ethanol program since 1975. In addition to biofuel, we also assessed the mitigation potential of other energy products, such as, bioelectricity, and CO2 emissions captured during fermentation of sugar canes juice. Finally, we projected the neutralization capacity of sugar canes bio-energy system over the next 32 years. The balance between several carbon stocks and flows was considered in the model, including the effects of land-use change. Our results show that the neutralization of the carbon released due to land-use change was attained only in 1992, and the maximum mitigation potential of the sugar cane sector was 128 tonnes of CO2 per ha in 2006, An ideal reconstitution of the deployment of the sugar cane sector, including the full exploitation of bio-electricitys potential, plus the capture of CO2 released during fermentation, shows that the neutralization of land-use change emissions would have been achieved in 1988, and its mitigation potential would have been 390 tC02/ha, Finally, forecasts of the sector up to 2039 shows that the mitigation potential in 2039 corresponds to 836 tC02/ha, which corresponds to 5.51 kg of CO2 per liter of ethanol produced, or 55% above the negative emission level.