The New Biofuel Republics

[Clara T]

The new biofuel republics

by Dr. Elizabeth Bravo and Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

The end of cheap oil and the impending fuel crisis have convinced the European Union and the United States to seriously tackle their long-standing and worsening “addiction to oil”, not by kicking the habit, but by guzzling biofuels instead. These “carbon neutral” fuels – biodiesel or bioethanol - make even committed environmentalists feel good about getting into their SUVs, as they do not contribute to carbon emissions. Burning biofuels simply sends back into the atmosphere carbon dioxide that the plants took out when they were growing in the field. The snag is that there simply isn’t sufficient arable land on which to grow all the biofuel crops needed to satisfy the voracious appetites of the industrialised nations.

So, the next phase of colonisation has begun. The industrialised countries are looking to the Third World to feed their addiction: the land is there for the taking as is cheap labour, and the environmental damages of large plantations, biofuels extraction and refining can all be outsourced, exactly as they were in the extraction of crude oil. Brazil is already currently the main supplier of bioethanol to the United Kingdom, and is looking to greatly increasing its exports elsewhere (see Box).

Ethanol in Brazil

Brazil’s national ethanol programme (ProAlcool) began in response to the oil crisis of the 1970s, and ethanol now accounts for 40 percent of Brazil’s driving fuel. The country’s ‘flex fuel’ car fleet is the only one in the world that can use 100 percent of either ethanol or gasoline. Brazil’s ethanol production was 15.9 billion litres in 2005, second only to the United States, and more than a third of the global production.

Until recently, Brazilian ethanol has been produced for domestic consumption. But in 2004, exports more than doubled to 2.6 billion litres. In 2005, the futures market for sugar rose by 62 percent on the back of rising international demand for ethanol. Brazil is exporting to US, India, Venezuela, Nigeria, China and Europe. It is negotiating with Japan to export ethanol to it after Japan authorized the substitution of up to 3 percent of gasoline with ethanol to help meet its Kyoto Treaty commitments. Already the logistics of distribution, rather than productive capacity, is limiting the expansion of Brazil’s ethanol exports, and creating a demand for building ports with storage tanks and loading facilities, and improving railway and pipeline links between the ports and sugar-producing regions. A new ethanol port in Santos will increase Brazil’s export capacity to 5.6 billion litres by the end of 2006.


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