Today we were lucky enough to get
to meet the secretary of energy and the undersecretaries of renewable energy
for the state of Sao Paulo. I found it so interesting and refreshing to hear
their perspective on all of the progress in renewable energy. I am also
thankful that this trip happened towards the end of our stay since I was able to have all of the background on the energy sources they were discussing. Truthfully,
after leaving all of the different renewable energy plants on this trip I felt pessimistic
about the future of renewable energy. Solar, hydro, and biomass all seem so
expensive and hard to implement due to the scales of the production and the
energy output. Also, while hydro power provides a lot of energy, unfortunately
Sao Paulo has already hit the max amount of hydro power available to them. Overall,
the idea of switching a significant amount of power over to being sourced by renewable
energy seemed almost impossible to me.
However, today we got to hear all about how
successful Sao Paulo has been in increasing the renewable energy used. While the
world only gets 14.3% of their energy from renewables, Sao Paulo gets an
impressive 58% of their energy from renewables. Out of that 58%, 27.6% is from biomass, 15.8% is from hydroelectricity, and 8.9% is biofuel. I was
impressed that the leading source of energy was biomass since I personally
thought that biomass had the least amount of potential currently out of all of
the different types of renewables. We asked the undersecretaries what they
thought the next step was in renewable energy since all of the hydro potential
has been exhausted and is also unreliable due to droughts. I was surprised to
hear that they thought that solar and biomass would be the next big step for
them.
I always thought one hurtle for
biomass was that not all cars can use it. However, I learned that Brazil
created flex cars (cars that can use both ethanol and oil) in 2003 and all cars
since have been flex cars. One benefit to biomass fuel is it is cheaper than
oil for consumers especially when sugarcane is in season. However, there is
still the problem that consumers aren’t as environmentally conscious so they still don’t
make the switch. Regardless, sugarcane is such a large industry in Sao Paulo
and Brazil as a whole that it makes sense to focus on as an energy source.
However, they did specify that they need to focus on improving the technology
used to convert sugarcane to ethanol and not growing more since they already have
so much. Sugarcane does have the downside that it is also effected by
the droughts but is still a good alternative. For solar power, they explained
that Sao Paulo is a better candidate for it than other locations due
to the proximity to the solar plants. With closer proximity to the plants, it
is more efficient to transfer the energy to consumers so it is a good option
for them. Also, the focus would be using solar to heat liquids and not convert
it to electricity.
Hearing all of them be so optimistic
with a goal of increasing their renewables by 4% each year brought hope back to
me that renewable energy has a future. Sao Paulo is definitely a leader in renewables
compared to the rest of the world based off of the statistics we learned today. I am so grateful that the secretary of energy
took time to talk to us along with the undersecretaries. I understand now just how
important renewables are for Sao Paulo and have a new appreciation for this
trip and why we came here to learn about sustainable energy.
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