Report: US and Brazil to Launch Biofuels Initiative
04 February 2007
McClatchy reports that the US and Brazil will soon launch a partnership to expand ethanol and other biofuels in the Americas. The goals are to introduce ethanol into more countries, and to build a global, tradable ethanol commodity market akin to that of oil.
Eduardo Pereira de Carvalho, a former Brazilian agriculture and finance minister who heads the Sao Paulo Sugarcane Agroindustry Union, proposed the partnership concept during testimony before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in June 2006.
Brazil has been working to promote a global market for ethanol. In order to achieve this goal, we consider that it is important to launch a Brazil-US partnership. Brazil and the USA account for 70% of the world’s ethanol production. In our view there is not going to be a global market until we see ethanol being produced and consumed in many countries. We need more players. Such partnership between our two countries could pursue goals such as common standards, technical cooperation, common research projects and&madsh;above all—joint efforts to promote ethanol in third markets.
In short, free markets and fair systems to govern them, need to be recognized as powerful instruments to secure a balanced supply of renewable fuels in the near future. And Brazil and the USA would have much to gain by joining forces to globalize ethanol as an energy commodity.
—Eduardo Pereira de Carvalho
Along with sugar cane, tropical/subtropical sweet potatoes may have a major role to play.
Posted by: allen_xl_Z | 04 February 2007 at 08:44 AM
So why is there a tariff on Brazilian ethanol?
Posted by: DS | 04 February 2007 at 10:04 AM
I agree -- a free market begins at home. This initiative may just be an American attempt to placate the Brazilians over the fact that the American market is functionally closed to Brazilian ethanol exports. If the American government can provide some muscle to open other markets to the Brazilians, they can export there. American ethanol producers probably don't care about the loss of those overseas markets for now, because domestic demand is limitless relative to our current production, so producers don't need to export in order to sell all that they can make.
Posted by: NBK-Boston | 04 February 2007 at 10:58 AM
Perhaps it's just a well that the US has a tariff on ethanol, at least that way some of the cost effect on food is limited to the states. Some of these countries would let people starve if they could make a buck selling ethanol to the States. (Cellulosic would be another matter)
Posted by: Neil | 05 February 2007 at 02:49 PM