Brazil has struggled to sustain its production of biofuel from sugar cane.
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“A new moment for mankind.” That was how Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, described his country’s biofuel boom in March 2007. Back then, Brazil was the poster child of ethanol fuel, its output second only to that of the United States. Fermenting the sugars in the country’s abundant sugar cane produced a motor fuel that lowered carbon dioxide emissions, and many saw Brazil as a model for how the world could shed its addiction to oil, creating jobs along the way.
Five years on, Lula’s vision has tarnished. Biofuels are falling from grace around the world as critics charge that devoting millions of hectares of agricultural land to fuel crops is driving up food prices and that the climate benefits of biofuels are modest at best. But the fall has been hardest in Brazil, where government policies have compounded the effects of the global economic downturn.
Domestic consumption of liquid ethanol this year has been 26% lower than for the same period in 2008. Forty-one of the country’s roughly 400 sugar-cane ethanol plants have closed over that time. The price of pure ethanol at the pump is so high that in most states it is cheaper to fill up flexible-fuel cars with petrol blends that contain about 20% ethanol. The shift back to fossil fuels, combined with rapid growth in the number of cars on the roads (see ‘Fuelling Brazil’s transport boom’), has worsened city smog and caused emissions in the transport sector to spike at about 170 million tons of CO2 in 2011, up from less than 140 million tons in 2008. “We are increasing the world’s GDP: we are buying more oil and spending more on pollution-related health care,” jokes Ildo Sauer, who studies energy policy at the University of São Paulo and is a former director of the state oil giant Petrobras.
Brazil’s ethanol roller coaster is a sobering example of what can happen when climate and energy planning clash with economic decision-making. It began with the 2008 economic crisis, which staunched new investments in the sector just as it was expanding rapidly, and deep in debt. Rather than developing new plantations, the industry fell back on harvesting cane from older, less-productive sites, and average yields plummeted from 115 tons per hectare in 2008 to 69 tons this year. Combined with two bad harvests, this has forced Brazil to import some 1.5 billion liters of maize (corn) ethanol from the United States over the past 2 years.
But the killer blow came when the government decided to freeze the price of petrol and diesel to keep inflation under control, leaving biofuels less competitive. On the very night that current President Dilma Rousseff gave the closing speech of the Rio +20 conference in June — the final agreement of which promised to phase out fossil-fuel subsidies — the government said it would be reducing a federal fuel tax to zero. “We have taken away jobs from agroindustry, stalled growth and worsened the air of our cities for the sake of inflation control,” says Luiz Horta, a bioenergy researcher at the Federal University of Itajubá.
Meanwhile, the government has tried to stimulate the economy with tax breaks on the sale of new cars. That, combined with the cost of pure ethanol, has meant that “the share of alcohol in our transport fuel matrix has dropped from 55% in 2008 to 35%”, says André Ferreira, head of the Institute for Energy and the Environment, a think-tank in São Paulo.
According to Antônio de Pádua Rodrigues, technical director and acting president of UNICA, Brazil’s sugar-cane industry association, the government knows that the situation is unsustainable. It has promised the industry that petrol prices will go up next year, and that the blend of ethanol will rise from 20% to 25%, the maximum allowed by law. But it will take time for the industry to bounce back from its poor fortune, and ethanol is likely to remain scarce and expensive for the next two years, say Rodrigues and Horta.
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11 Comments
Add CommentWhy not use other plants...like duck weeds or algae. No farm land needed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNone of them are economic or scalible. Algae still needs land and energy. Most companies attempting algae have given up on the technique due to economics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCalifornia CARB fuel was close to zero ethanol in our fuel in 1992..
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1992 fuel price about $1.40 per gallon.
Ethanol push from fed EPA and friends pushed ethanol to 5.6% and we paid more for our fuel.
Fed EPA and Big oil refiners pushed the oxygenate to 10% and we paid more.
Now BP GMO fuel is pushing for over $1.00 in corporate welfare with 15% of the fuel market while cutting back Oil and refining
Will BP GMO fuel patents generate credit trade income from the Big oil industry with the Queen Mother help.
The Queen banker friends may want a share.
So. how big does California ethanol bill need to be to qualify for the EPA waiver?
Can Mary Nichols and Governor Brown support a BP GMO fuel ethanol waiver? Motorcycle, Classic car, Lawn tool engines, Boat, & the beef just might like a choice of fuel ethanol opinion, a waiver. Can Governor Brown use the 10th amendment to support California Waiver.
Technology exists but is not available.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Firestorm_Spark_Plug for information regarding a new type of sparkplug that reduces emissions and increase fuel efficiency by approximately 40%.
Also, coal and oil are not "fossil" fuels. Russians have demonstrated deep crust hydrocarbon formation by planet earth.
It ain't what your don't know that bothers me. Its what you know for sure that just ain't so.
While you're at it, see www.thunderbolts.info for cosmology from the perspective of plasma physics rather than abstract mathematics.
Brings to mind the saying that nothing so advances science as the death of old scientists.
Another miracle spark plug? Yawn.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrue, fossil fuels aren't made from "fossils" Unless youy mean coal). That doesn't mean they're getting any cheaper to pump out, or that we should burn them up.
Watching people from developed countries talk about fuel prices is very amusing for a Brazilian. You guys find $1,92 a gallon expensive. That's the price of ONE LITER of gasoline here in Brazil. lol.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat the problem is, is greed. And by the ethanol producers. Their real price is well under $2/gal.
If their yields are down again it's because of greed by not maintaining their fields. Facts are they want to raise prices and have then complain when no one wants to buy.
Ethanol done right as Brazil use to do and the US still does is an excellent fuel bringing jobs and energy independence at prices below oil/btu while being cleaner.
And let's not forget oil, coal socialized subsidizes like protecting international oil companies for free, paying for the healthcare problems caused by them, there dostrction of land, water and air we pay to fix in our taxes.
$1.92/liter is about average at these oil prices, $85/bbl and not high taxes. anyone getting it much under that is being subsidized.
Ignotz should be named ignorant as that is what his posts are or he is a scammer because they are not true. If oil is regenerated then why do oil wells run dry? The sparkplug is a pure scam. Which is it Ignotz?
Charlie the price of ethanol has gone up because of the price of oil. But it also has kept oil price from rising faster by displacing 20% of US imports. Now add the jobs, economic boost from both and ethanol is a clear winner.
If you want to blame anything on food shortages it's oil costs and feeding cattle 10 lbs of grain to get 1 lb of FAT, not protein.
i don't care other than economics and like real facts, not made up ones, because I drive my EV's at 25% of the cost of driving a similar oil fueled version. I'd like 100% ethanol though for my rarely used unlimited range generator for long trips. But it's not availably or E-85 in Fla.
Bless us with a report on your farming experience. Zero? I thought so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI grew up on a farm but this has nothing to do with farming, it's politics and bad capitalism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust what has changed in the yrs when ethjanol was affordable and now?
Certainly the land hasn't unless it neglected, no? The making of ethanol has got 20-35% more eff, No?
Has sugar cane got more expensive to grow? It's got less expensive to harvest, No?
In the US corn prices have risen because of speculation but so has the price of ethanol byproducts like corn oil, DDG's/dried mash, etc. Since it's actually a better cattle or even human feed after the ethanol is made, little food value is lost from corn ethanol.
As I said, it's a political and greed problem.
Do you farm? I'd have to guess not from your post as most US farmer are very happy with ethanol. What expertise do you have to Judge this Carlyle? What is your bias?
Brazil can promote Biofuel from Agave which is a care-free growth plant. Mexico is already doing this.DEveloping countries can raise this plant in wastelands.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
E-mail: anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com
Fermenting biomass is a slow process. Better to pyrolyse biomass. That way food is preserved and only the agricultural residues are converted to 3rd generation biofuels. And this also sequesters CO2...and earns more money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee www.eprida.com