Saturday, July 01, 2006

Brazil's Bounty: A Photo Essay

A sun-drenched look at how this agricultural giant has become a global leader in biofuels.

By Stephen Herrera

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In Brazil during the 1990s -- when oil prices were low, the national debt was high, and the state oil giant Petrobras was tapping into huge new oil reserves -- the backers of biofuels struggled to keep their industry afloat. Then came September 11, the Iraq War, soaring oil demand from China, dissent within OPEC, and the oil shock that pushed prices over $70 a barrel. All of a sudden, biofuels -- particularly ethanol -- were the new oil. Brazil, as the world's largest exporter of ethanol, is a leader in developing this energy source.

[Click here for the photo essay.]

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Comments

	Brazil's Biofuels jgrott on 09/18/2006 at 9:05 AM
Posts: 1 Avg Rating:	I like bio-fuels because of the long term possibilities for sustainability and in spite of the high monetary and social costs. But we must be realistic about those costs. The Bounty of Brazil is dependent on three unusual conditions that do not yet apply to the USA. 1- Brazil uses natural gas pipelined from Bolivia to supplement their supply for making the ammonia needed to grow sugar cane. The cost of the imported natural gas is lower than world market bcause Brazil is the only major customer for Bolivia's natural gas. When the bio-fuel publicity hit the immediate reaction of Bolivia was to increase the price using the threat of closing the pipeline. Brazil's bio-fuel economy depends on the politics in Bolivia. 2- Sugar Cane is labor intensive and the payscale for farm workers in Brazil is only a fraction of the wages for even undocumented agricultural workers in the USA. 3- Do a material balance on the carbon emissions from making biofuel, One co-product of ammonia is the carbon dioxide formed in converting natural gas to anhydrous ammonia.( 33-34 million BTU/ton a snatural gas) A second co-product is the carbon dioxide from the conversion of the sugar cane. 3- Land is cheap in Brazil because they have so much raw land in an area of adaquate rainfal and where they do not have to compete with real estate developers and there is no great effort to practice land conservation. These factors create conditions such that Biofuels might be cost competitive in the USA if oil remains at $70/bbl and we in the USA; a- open all of our natural gas reserves, both on-shore and off-shore,to production and build the natural gas pipeline to bring natural gas from Alaska b- fully open our borders to undocumented workers. c- restrict the conversion of agricultural land to development. jgrott Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: Brazil's Biofuels zifos on 04/10/2007 at 7:31 PM
Posts: 11 Avg Rating:	Brasil has lots of land to grow plants for ethanol because the keep cutting down the rainforest. People should start looking at other forms of fuel. For example, biodiesel from algae http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html Rate this comment: (Reply)