Brazil’s privately owned Grupo Potencial will be investing BRL 200M (US$37M) in building two biofuel pipelines in the south of the country, the company’s vice president Carlos Hammerschmidt was quoted as saying in a Reuters report.
Scheduled for construction next year and subject to regulatory approval, the 55km pipelines would be the longest of their type in the South American country, the 24 June report said.
One of the new pipelines would transport biodiesel and other biofuels like ethanol, connecting the company’s Lapa biodiesel plant to fuel distributors, Reuters wrote.
The Lapa plant, which sells 65,000m³/month of biodiesel, plans to transport half of this volume via one of the new pipelines, according to the report.
Potencial’s investment signalled confidence that overall biofuels demand would rise in line with increasing demand for more sustainable sources of energy, the report said.
The investment would also boost Brazil’s energy pipeline network, which was about 5% of that of the USA, Hammerschmidt was quoted as saying.
As well as producing biodiesel at Lapa, Potencial had plans to produce corn ethanol and soyabean-based sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), Reuters wrote.
By 2027, Hammerschmidt said the country would expect 1% of fuel used in the aviation sector to be SAF.
