URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20341334/site/newsweek/page/0/ Is Brazil's Sugar Cane Ethanol Better Than Corn-Based? How Brazil is transforming sugar cane into ethanol that it claims is a cleaner, cheaper and more sustainable source of fuel. By Mac Margolis Newsweek August 19, 2007 - It takes steady nerves, and maybe a touch of folly, to walk willingly into a global financial storm. So when Brazilian agrimogul Rubens Ometto went ahead this past Thursday with the initial public offering of his giant ethanol company, Cosan, on the New York Stock Exchange, a few financial critics understandably scratched their heads. After all, Banco Itaú, one of Latin America's hottest properties, took one look at the crumbling bourses of August and summarily canceled its own long awaited public offering, scheduled for the same day. But when the trading floor fell quiet, Ometto's empire was not only intact, but it was $1 billion richer. Cosan closed its first day at a respectable $10.50 a share, a bullish moment in a bear market. Ometto and Cosan can thank the weather for its successful debut. Now that climate change is the worry du jour, the search for clean, renewable energy has sent scientists and companies to the far corners of the map. In France, beets are being turned into ethanol. In the United States, it's corn that's king. Sweet potatoes, compost and swtichgrass (a weed-like variety of grass found in prairies) are all being transformed into biofuels for the future. But it's Brazil's sugar cane-derived ethanol that really has researchers, investors and the markets excited. "The world is searching for efficiency," says Sérgio Thompson Flores, head of Infinity Bioenergy, a U.K.-based renewable-energy company. "In terms of technology, genetic engineering, climate and soil, Brazil has a monumental comparative advantage in ethanol." That may explain why in addition to Cosan, some 350 Brazilian companies are currently brewing ethanol from sugar cane with the number of producers set to rise to 412 by 2012. According to its advocates, sugar cane ethanol is the next best thing to hotwiring the sun. Relatively speaking, they say, it's also easy on the atmosphere, releasing a fraction of the carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases that add to the world's steamy greenhouse. Also, because plant waste can be used as fertilizer or as fuel to fire the distillery furnaces, making sugar ethanol requires only a fifth of the gasoline and diesel it typically takes to make fuel from crops like corn. And Brazil's sweet brand of ethanol is efficient, brewed without the official price props or government handouts that are common in Europe and the United States. At least that's the pitch Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made on his tour in early August of Central America and the Caribbean, chatting up clients about sugar cane ethanol from Tegucigalpa to Kingston. Biofuels like "ethanol and biodiesel offer a genuine energy option for sustainable development," Lula said. But environmental groups aren't so juiced. Trailing Lula was a chorus of jeers from world environmentalists and civic groups, such as Conservation International, the Brazilian labor organization CUT, and even the United Nations Environment Program. They have portrayed sugar cane as the steamroller of agriculture, flattening forests and untold species of wildlife in its path, and decried ethanol as a serious polluter crossdressing as green fuel. Though fuel alcohol burns cleaner than fossil fuels, the doubters predict the biofuel boom will push sugar cane deep into the backlands, all the way to the Amazon basin, so destroying precious biodiversity. Naysayers also claim that turning over farmland to energy crops will crowd out conventional crops, sending the price of food and animal feed soaring. Ironically, the hype that ethanol's advocates have generated is hurting the industry's cause. Take the breathless claims that ethanol will free the world from fossil fuels and reduce reliance on oil from the Mideast. Neither promise will be fulfilled anytime soon. Between them, Brazil and the United States turn out some 72 percent of the world's ethanol on a total of 15 million hectares. That amounts to around 2 percent of all the gasoline consumed on the planet every year. To replace just 1 percent of U.S. gasoline consumption would require a staggering additional 8 billion liters of ethanol. "That is fully half of Brazil's yearly output," writes Marcos Jank, who presides over the Brazilian sugar and alcohol producers association, Única. The drive to turn sugar into fuel began as a whim by Brazil's ruling generals of the 1970s who dreamed of sowing their way out of the world energy crisis. Thanks to that stubborn obsession, Brazil now boasts the world's only cost-effective bioenergy industry. Brazilian ethanol distillers make alcohol from sugar at 22 cents a liter, against 30 cents a liter for corn ethanol and 53 cents for beet-based alcohol. Unlike their European and U.S. counterparts, they no longer draw official subsidies. Today, nearly eight of every 10 new cars hitting the road in Brazil are flex-fuel, burning gasoline or ethanol or any combination of the two. Despite ethanol's success, there's been a nagging concern that the Brazilian government and companies like Cosan will supplant precious rainforest with fields of sugar cane. But that's not likely. Most of the Amazon basin is too hot and too wet for sugar cane, which flourishes in alternating bouts of hot and cold as well as wet and dry weather. Little wonder that of the 87 new distilleries planned for the next decade, none is targeted for areas in the tropical rainforest. But because sugar can thrive just south of the Amazon basin, green groups such as Conservation International counter that ethanol means double jeopardy: directly threatening untold plants and animals in the Brazilian cerrados (savannahs) and indirectly threatening Amazonia by pushing low-tech cattle ranchers into the rainforest, where they gobble up one hectare for every head of cattle. But that argument rests on a blind spot. If the United States decided to thwart its farm lobby and import Brazilian sugar cane-based ethanol to meet President Bush's ambitious biofuel plan (substituting 15 percent of the country's gasoline by 2017), Brazil would need to sow cane on 20 million additional hectacres. That's just 7 percent of the nation's available farmland. José Goldemberg, environmental secretary for São Paulo, reckons that his state could triple sugar cane planting without toppling a single tree. But Brazil's ethanol makers know that such realities won't necessarily assuage their critics. To show they're going the extra mile, many have signed a pact to gradually put an end to the slash-and-burn method of harvesting that has been a sooty hallmark of sugar cane farming. The industry has also agreed to retrain sugar cane workers who will inevitably be replaced by harvesting machines and knows it will may face stiff penalties for violating labor rights or fouling the environment. Cosan and other companies are increasing productivity and coming up with ways to produce more sugar on less land while simultaneously pouring money into saving energy. Undoubtedly, as the climate continues to warm, the pressure to produce biofuels will only increase. The cerrado, rich in wildlife as it may be, is one of the most promising frontiers for farming in the world--a fact that has not been lost on sugar growers. They know that if Brazilian's growing ethanol industry is to flourish, they'll need to be friendly to both the environment and to their environmentally minded critics.
I read somewhere that ethanol that was based on sugar had more...fuck, what was the term...I forget..."energy density", I think... Anyway, more bang for amount than corn or soy...
The payback for sugar cane ethanol is 8 to 1 for energy gained for energy used in production, compared to 1.3 to 1 for corn. Sugar cane mskes much more sense, that is what we need to be growing here if we are serious, not corn.
I would think ethanol made from sugar would have less of a ripple effect on the cost of other commodities, like milk, than corn based. As far as I know, sugar cane isn't a common livestock feed.
As if the sugar industry in South Florida didn't already have the state legislature in their pocket and have carte blanche to fuck up the environment. Give them the energy excuse and you can kiss the Everglades goodbye.
Yes, the sugar indusrty also has the feds in their pocket and has for years due to Cuba. It is illegal to buy sugar off the open market and all sugar must come from within the us. That is why lifesavers are no longer made in the us but in Canada.
That's a good point. They say that swampy areas help dissipate severe storms as they come inland, reducing the property damage. Ironically, if global warming does cause more severe storms, people will be screaming for ethanol as a quick replacement for fossil fuels, and then will just trash the swamps more, making more inland ares even more vulnerable...
There is a lot of criticism of this sort of thing due to the fact that it tends to push food prices up. I'm undecided.
Me too. I wonder, though, if that's just temporary until supplies meet demands. It's very good for farmers, but bad for the rest of us.
It would be cheaper for the United States just to drill for more oil while at the same time building nuclear power plants. Ethanol is an energy illusion for the United States.
Which will only hurt the United States when the oil runs out, if it runs out, and the rest of the world has gone on to alternate fuels.
Excepf for the fact that oil will almost certainly never run out. Not for several centuries at least. It will get harder to find and more expensive to recover and refine, but running out isn't in the cart. I don't care what Hubert (or Hupert) says.
