The expansion of sugarcane cultivation in Brazil for ethanol production in environmentally unprotected areas or reserved for food production could potentially replace up to 13.7% of global crude oil consumption and reduce global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 
up to 5.6% by 2045.
These estimates come from an international study with Brazilian participation, the results of which were published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The study sought to investigate how the expansion of sugarcane ethanol could help limit the increase in the average global temperature to less than 2 °C by reducing CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion, as agreed by the 196 countries that signed the Paris Agreement in December 2015.
The study was conducted as part of a project supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation – FAPESP and the National Institute of Science and Technology for Bioethanol – INCT Bioethanol.
The analysis showed that sugarcane cultivation for ethanol production could expand to between 37.5 million and 116 million hectares and that sugarcane ethanol could provide the equivalent of between 3.63 million and 12.77 million barrels of oil per day by 2045, considering projected climate changes, while ensuring 
the conservation of forests and areas reserved for food production.
As a result, it would be possible to reduce oil consumption by 3.8%-13.7% and global net CO2 emissions by 1.5%-5.6% by 2045 compared to 2014 data.
“Our results show that it is possible to reconcile the two main objectives to which Brazil has committed under the Paris Agreement: conservation of natural environments, especially the Amazon, and increased use of renewable energies,” said Marcos Buckeridge, a professor at IB-USP and one of the authors of the article.
The authors of the study emphasize that sugarcane ethanol is a scalable short-term solution to the problem of reducing CO2 emissions in the 
global transport sector.
Producing fuel ethanol from sugarcane in Brazil is much more efficient than producing ethanol from corn, they argue. Its CO2 emissions correspond to only 14% of those from oil. Furthermore, emissions resulting from land-use change for sugarcane cultivation can be compensated in just two to eight years.
“Rapid scalability is key: it is what is needed to accelerate society’s responses to climate change,” said Buckeridge. “All evidence suggests that the average global temperature increase will exceed 1.5 °C by 2030. It is not far off. Brazilian ethanol can be of great help to the planet.