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More than sun, sea and samba
Here in the comfortable, civilised EU we like to think of ourselves as pioneers and world leaders in sustainable transport. But when it comes to biofuels, by far the world leader in both production and use lies 5,000 miles away across the Atlantic. No, not our friends in the USA, but further south: Brazil.
Brazil has been investing in a big way in bioethanol from sugar, ever since the oil crises of the early 1970s. Today, ethanol accounts for around 40 per cent of the fuel used in cars in Brazil and it is expected to overtake gasoline by 2020. Around 90 per cent of all new cars sold in the country are flex-fuel vehicles that can run on either petrol or ethanol. A government subsidy means that the innovative cars are no more expensive than conventional vehicles.
The somewhat un-European climate helps in bioethanol development.
Truly green
While report after report questions the true sustainability of biofuels, centred around the whole lifecycle carbon savings and worries about land use, Brazil can justifiably claim to have a truly green product. Sugar cane takes relatively little energy to grow and convert to fuel, particularly compared to maize, which is considerably more expensive and estimated to burn about seven times more fossil fuel per unit of energy produced.
Sugar cane ethanol’s green credentials were recently endorsed in a report from the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission's in-house scientific institute. The International Monetary Fund reported that Brazil’s sugar cane ethanol was the only form of ethanol generally cheaper to produce than gasoline. The report said it was 15 per cent cheaper to produce than gasoline, while US-produced ethanol is 18 per cent more expensive and European sugar-beet based ethanol twice as expensive.
And ethanol production plants look so much better than oil refineries too! (photo under GNU)
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Brazil produces around 18 billion litres of ethanol a year, of which 4bn litres are exported. However, management consultancy McKinsey recently suggested that if the area being farmed for sugar cane doubled, farming were mechanised and fertiliser were used, then Brazil's ethanol output could increase to 160bn litres by 2020. The last two measures would, of course, decrease the product’s carbon efficiency and increase the costs of production.
Not immune
Brazil isn’t immune from biofuel worries, though. These are the same worries that will be familiar to biofuel supporters everywhere, namely that growth in ethanol production (which currently accounts for only 1 per cent of arable land) will take land from other more adaptable crops, like soybeans.
For now, through, the South American giant is proof enough that Europe isn’t the only one leading the biofuels battle.
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