Transição sociotécnica para biocombustíveis em cooperativas agropecuárias do Paraná: diagnóstico

Abstract

This dissertation investigated the socio-technical transition to biofuels in agroindustrial cooperatives in the state of Paraná, justified by the global urgency of decarbonization and the strategic opportunity to transform agricultural environmental liabilities into high-value energy and biofertilizer assets. The overall objective of the work was to verify in what manner the adoption of renewable energies in these organizations was aligned with the multi-level perspective of the socio-technical transition to sustainability. The methodology adopted was characterized as qualitative and exploratory research based on Bardin’s content analysis technique, applied to a collection of 39 documents—including sustainability reports, videos, and news—from five large cooperatives in Paraná. The study used Artificial Intelligence tools for prospecting and compiling secondary data, allowing for a diagnosis of the companies’ positioning regarding technical, economic, and political decisions. The results confirmed the presence of the three levels of the multilevel perspective (landscape, regime, and niche) in institutional discourses, revealing that the transition was driven by macro-structural pressures (ESG guidelines and the Paris Agreement), while facing barriers at the regime level, such as the instability of the rural electricity grid and regulatory uncertainties. It was concluded that the agro-industrial sector in Paraná experienced a strategic reconfiguration in which biogas evolved from a “technical adjustment” to a vector of negative carbon competitiveness. The cooperative model proved fundamental to enabling the necessary industrial scale, suggesting that the definitive consolidation of this transition depends on public policies focused on technical assistance and improvement of energy infrastructure.