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Future projections indicate an expansion for both food and energy demands, which can increase pressure on land use, while there is an urgent global need for climate change mitigation. Bioenergy is foreseen as key option to meet future energy demands and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, however its sustainability depends on locations and regional characteristics. Simultaneously, agricultural production models that co-produce food, feed, and energy offer sustainability synergies and co-benefits, but site-specific sustainability assessments of their large-scale implementation are missing. This study presents a bottom-up approach to assess spatially explicit sustainability aspects of bioenergy-livestock integrated systems (BLI) in Brazil and shed light on their contribution to future energy demands, to climate change mitigation targets, and their impacts on selected ecosystem services, including bioenergy production, climate change mitigation, reduction of food competition, biodiversity conservation, and avoided deforestation. The proposed integration considers livestock intensification and use of biofuels by-products as animal feed supplement, taking advantage of synergies between these two value chains. The expansion of the BLI system in the Center-South region of Brazil produce up to 89 billion liters of ethanol, enough to meet future domestic ethanol demands from multiple shared socioeconomic pathways and generating surpluses for export. This production takes place on 16 million hectares of pastureland within the Sugarcane Agroecological Zoning, excluding the Amazon and Pantanal biomes, and biodiversity hotspots. BLI expansion mitigate up to 250 million tonnes of CO 2 eq and generate 15 billion dollars of profits. The best locations to maximize the selected ecosystem services are west of São Paulo, east of Mato Grosso do Sul, and the south-central region of the states of Goiás. This study may encourage the formulation of enhanced public policies for the integration of bioenergy and livestock value chains and guide a sustainable large-scale deployment of BLI systems. • Bioenergy and livestock integration (BLI): co-production of food, feed and energy. • BLI systems: 89 billion liters of ethanol and 250 million tonnes of CO 2 eq mitigated. • Enough ethanol to meet future Brazilian demands and surplus to be exported. • Biomass expansion only on pastureland inside Sugarcane Agroecological Zoning. • Without land displacement and deforestation of native vegetation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biofuels are predicted to constitute a large proportion of fuel consumption in the global transport sector under stringent climate mitigation polices in future. In Brazil, sugarcane ethanol has been widely deployed at large scale and an oriented expansion of sugarcane is considered to be a key measure to ensure the expected positive outcomes from biofuels. In this study, more recent and accurate georeferenced information were combined with an enhanced land use classification system to update the original Sugarcane Agroecological Zoning (SAEZ). We also excluded environmentally relevant areas (ERA) in our updated SAEZ to create a new set of reference maps for supporting future prioritization of areas for sugarcane ethanol expansion. We mapped 41.7 Mha as suitable land for sugarcane expansion in center-south region of Brazil, differently from the 50 Mha indicated in the original SAEZ. After excluding the ERA, 33.7 Mha was found to be suitable for sugarcane expansion, of which 20 Mha is currently occupied with pasture lands. About half of these areas were located in Mato Grosso do Sul and Minas Gerais states and an exploratory assessment of two microregions from these states demonstrated the importance of conducting regional assessments to prioritize the areas for a more sustainable sugarcane expansion to meet future bioenergy demands. • Our analysis identified an area 17% smaller than original agro-ecological zoning suitable for sugarcane expansion. • By excluding environmentally relevant areas, the total suitable area for sugarcane expansion is reduced to 33.7 Mha. • About two thirds of that area is currently occupied with pasture lands. • About half of suitable areas occupied with pasture lands are in two Brazilian states. • Local conditions are fundamental for oriented expansion of bioenergy production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]