Energy and Environmental Contributions for Future Natural Gas Supply Planning in Brazil

Natural gas has become a strategic source of energy, despite its technical and economic benefits, largely due to its lower environmental impacts compared with other fuels. Given this scenario, Brazil has increased the availability of this resource to meet the demand of more interior regions and increases its autonomy with respect to this fuel. The aim of this study is to evaluate the environmental impacts of current and future natural gas supply situations in Brazil. To this end, the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique is applied, with a cradle‐to‐gate approach for the climate change (CC) and primary energy demand (PED) impact categories. For the current scenario, the main contributions to CC occur in the form of CH4 emissions during gas transportation operations (crude or refined) and resource withdrawal from reserves. For future supplies, the applied analysis identifies transport distance as an important PED focus, whereas the same parameter and the distributed volume of refined gas are noteworthy as impact sources concerning CC.