Brazil set to become world´s main biofuel supplier

http://www.aebrazil.com/highlights/2004/mai/25/38.htm

Rio de Janeiro, 25 - Brazil could become the world´s largest supplier of biofuel within a decade according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), by which time 10% of the world´s gasoline and 3% of diesel will be biofuel admixtures.

The IEA furthermore sees 60% to 70% of the biofuel replacements being made up of ethanol.

Brazilian ethanol, made from sugarcane, is around twice as cheap to produce as U.S. ethanol, which is made from corn. This means Brazil is already facing trade barriers to the U.S. market, where every cubic meter, which can be sold at $150, has another $130 added.

"There´s no fair competition," says Antônio Padua, the director of the São Paulo Sugar and Ethanol Association (Unica).

The U.S. Senate justifies its trade barrier by saying it is trying to encourage a nascent alternative energy source.

"This market (the U.S.) can be completely supplied by corn ethanol but even so prospects are excellent for Brazil, as well as for other cane growers such as China and Thailand," said Pádua.

Pádua forecasts that in ten years Brazil´s ethanol exports could rise to 10 billion liters annually from the 1 billion liters of 2003 and forecast 1.5b/l of 2004.

for the sugar cane fields, but I won't. After all, as this related thread suggests, Brazil's government has stated that claims about deforestration are all anti-agricultural bull.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x9112

We all know that Governments don't lie.

It is not a black hole that eats up more energy than it produces.

At present oil prices, ethanol can compete with OPEC.

Greed, corruption, capitalism, and industrialization and their effects have been known about for decades. What makes you think it will be any different for ethanol.

http://www.westbioenergy.org/july98/0798_01.htm
Oklahoma Researchers Test Switchgrass for Biofuel Production
A sea of switchgrass once grew in the central and eastern portions of the United States from the Gulf Coast to Canada. Today, switchgrass survives mainly on land not used for other purposes, land that is poorer in quality or land in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program.

However, if research at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater proves fruitful, this innocuous native grass may once again wave across vast areas grown as a feedstock to make biofuel.

Biofuel is fuel derived from plants. One biofuel, ethanol, is primarily made from corn and grain sorghum and blended with gasoline, but ethanol also can be made from other plant matter, waste dairy products and grasses such as switchgrass. Research has shown that, with the right infrastructure, ethanol could be produced from switchgrass more efficiently than from corn.

and planting switch grass?

Or are they grinding up the trees and fermenting them first? What about the tree frogs? Can one make tree frogs into ethanol? What about tree sloths? Does research suggest a way to get tree sloths into our gas tanks?

In any case, are we discussing Brazil or Oklahoma or Antartica in this thread? I thought this thread was celebrating the Brazilian contribution to the ethanol market. As far as I know, Brazilian ethanol is produced from sugar cane planted on fields cleared by time honored but unsustainable practice of slash and burn destruction of rain forest.

I have one other comment, not that I would ever mean to be critical. One hears lots of statements with the word "could" in posts like these. Given the world's atmosphere is collapsing now (as in "today", as in "the end of May, 2004") reading research papers and speculating on what they might mean someday, if there is indeed a someday, is not particularly comforting.

n/t

http://www.gringoes.com/articles_business.asp?ID_Noticia=2051
São Paulo, May 28 - The Brazilian and German governments are negotiating a 2% ethanol mixture to German gasoline, with a view to creating a European market for the Brazilian sugarcane-based fuel.
This theme is to be one of the main points discussed at the Brazil-Germany Committee on June 18 in Berlin.
The Brazilian side at the talks will be headed by Development, Industry and Foreign Trade Minister Luiz Fernando Furlan.
In the ambit of EU-Mercosur free trade talks the Europeans have proposed the purchase of a billion liters of Brazilian ethanol annually. Brazil has a target of selling 3 billion liters to the EU.
"In order to do that, however, we´d have to create a market that doesn´t yet exist in Europe," said Maraio Mugnani, the secretary of Brazil´s Chamber of Foreign Trade.

Paula Puliti

The proponents of bio fuel seem to have no concern for the environments they obliterate or the effluvia of their agricultural wet dreams. More arrogant homeocentricism.