Charcol based iron & steelmaking: from primitive technological model to solution for a post-Kyoto world

Author(s)

Thiago Fonseca Morello Ramalho da Silva

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA/SBD)
• Defense date: 2009-11-18

Examining board members

Ricardo Abramovay; Renato Perim Colistete; Jean Paul Laclau

• Advisor: Ricardo Abramovay
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Economics
• Indexed in: Banco de Dados Bibliográficos da USP-DEDALUS
• Location: Universidade de São Paulo. Biblioteca da Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade

Abstract

In a global-warming-frightened world, the positive carbon balance of charcoal-based iron & steel making recovers it from a past outshined by the dominance of the large fossil fuel mills. Nevertheless, the risk of not being able to profit from the global decarbonization consensus is material, owing to the dependency on deforestation. This is true even being that the certification of forest-biomass-substituting-arboreal plantations and the concession of carbon credits to low environmental impact carbonization technologies, are already concrete possibilities. Why the model of cultivation and optimal use of biomass has not become dominant among the charcoal based iron & steel mills of Minas Gerais, the industry that has originally conceived it? The answer to which the critical exam of the history of charcoal production and consumption in Minas Gerais state points out is that a non-permissive behavioral principle has predominated among the sectors enterprises. Its the conception that the loss imposed by the outcome where the forest stock becomes a limiting factor for iron & steel making is smaller than the loss imposed by the deviation, to biomass cultivation, of the resources generally directed to traditional capital accumulation opportunities. The forest farmer contract, as a way to break with this conception, is evaluated in the last chapter. The fact that economies of scale are not a necessary condition of eucalyptus plantation and charcoal making is demonstrated, what shows that such arrangements, characterized by the sharing of cost and risk between mills and farmers, can be mutually advantageous from a pecuniary standpoint. (AU)