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Biofuels: Brazil Disputes Cost Of Sugar In The Tank
By Mr Ethanol | June 10, 2008
guardian.co.uk:
The roar of large truck engines is drowned out by the thunderous sound of giant crushing machines and a piercing hiss from steam generators at a sugar-processing plant near the Brazilian city of Sertãozinho.
The 32-wheeled lorries and trailers - each with 60 tonnes of long, blackened stems of sugar cane protruding from their open tops - drive into position in quick succession for their loads to be hoisted out by giant grabs.
Some 500 lorries deliver their loads each day to be turned into sweetener for Coca-Cola, ethanol for Esso and bagasse, a waste product that drives the steam generators here - and increasingly for the local national electricity grid.
This ethanol has been serving the Brazilian transport sector for the past three decades without attracting much international interest or comment. That suddenly changed when the west saw biofuels as a source of energy security and clean power but the soaring cost of food and fears of deforestation have triggered a global debate on whether ethanol will cure or kill the planet.
Anselmo Lopes Rodrigues, chief executive of Santelisa Vale, which owns the sugar mill outside Sertãozinho, perhaps unsurprisingly is convinced of the big new future for ethanol. “We have a very large expansion plan,” he says. “In the next few years we must be very close to oil companies.”
That process has already started. In April, an associated business of Santelisa announced it had formed a 50-50 joint venture with BP in a deal worth as much as $1bn (£500m). The following day, Santelisa’s main rival bought Exxon Mobil’s network of filling stations in Brazil.
Goldman Sachs, the US investment bank, has recently bought a 16% stake in Santelisa and there is talk of a stockmarket listing - not only in São Paulo but also in New York. Read more.
Topics: Biofuel, Brazil, News |
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