ABSTRACT
As a fuel, bioenergy includes wood, wood wastes, straw, manure, sugarcane and other by-products from a variety of agriculture processes. Among the four areas of growth in bioenergy consumption in the future (electricity, industry, processes, building heating and cooking and transport liquid fuels), the most significant ones for Brazil are liquid biofuels and electricity. Ethanol from sugarcane is the most important biofuel produced in Brazil and together with the production of ethanol from corn in the United States, corresponds to 86% of this fuel in the world in 2016. One of the great challenges for the future of bioenergy is the improvement in the efficiency of biomass production, particularly sugarcane in Brazil. In the case of sugarcane, an increase in 60% of ethanol production could be reached, and this approach is being pursued in a number of pilot plants and a few industrial scale plants with somewhat disappointing result so far.
