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Non-Tech : Alternative energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (10800)	5/4/2011 12:58:33 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 16955

Biofuels market about to turn the corner: Europe is banking on Brazil 4/21/11 In large part because of strong government mandates in the US and Europe, analysts predict growing worldwide demand for biofuels in the next ten years. According to the ‘Global Biofuels Outlook 2010-2020’, an authoritative market research report published recently by US consultancy Hart Energy, global demand for biofuels will reach 250 billion litres in 2020, as against 95 billion litres in 2010... One thing is clear from Hart’s research: virtually all of the increase in global imports will have to be met by Brazil. Brazil is already the world’s top exporter of ethanol, and Hart thinks the country will further strengthen its leading position in the coming years, as its production capacity continues to expand. By 2020, Brazil will be in position to export a minimum of 13.2 billion litres to the world market, as against 5 billion litres now. According to Hart, no country even comes close to reaching these potential export volumes. ‘Most countries will either be in a potential supply deficit by 2020, or will be able to produce just enough volumes to satisfy internal demand... Brazil also has the advantage that its sugar cane-based ethanol production is generally perceived to be sustainable. Sugar cane crops occupy just 1% of Brazil’s arable land, which is moreover far away from the Amazon forest. Brazilian ethanol also has a four times higher energy content than corn-based ethanol. Hence the bullish mood about Brazil at the World Biofuels Market. Big Oil has clearly come to the same conclusion. Companies like Shell and BP are investing heavily in Brazilian ethanol production. Shell has entered into a $12 billion joint venture, called Raizen, with Cosan, the world’s largest producer of sugar cane-based ethanol. This company, which controls 800,000 hectares of sugar cane in Brazil, is an aggressive player in the consolidation of Brazil’s fragmented ethanol industry, regularly buying up family owned plantations and sugar mills. Cosan also became the main ethanol distributor when it acquired all the 1300 petrol stations of ExxonMobil in Brazil. Shell is investing $1.6 billion in Raizen, which plans to ramp up its production capacity from 2.2 billion litres now to 5 billion in 2016. Shell top executives Malcolm Brinded and Simon Henry said in a presentation in Cambridge in November 2010 that the company sees the large-scale production of biofuels in Brazil as one of four key ways to develop a secure and sustainable energy supply. Shell considers the expansion of the biofuels industry as critical to the transport sector. ‘Biofuels can make the biggest contribution to tackling CO2 emissions in the next two decades. We expect their share of the road transport fuel mix to increase from somewhere approaching 3% today to around the 9% mark by 2030’, the Shell executives said. BP has also recently entered the Brazilian market, although in a smaller way. In March 2011 the British oil company announced that it is paying $680 million for an 83% interest in the ethanol and sugar producer Companhia Nacional de Acucar e Alcool (CNAA). BP already owns a stake in another Brazilian ethanol company, Tropica BioEnergia. ‘Ethanol derived from Brazilian sugar-cane offers the best hope of replacing oil as the world’s main source of fuel when it runs out’, BP’s CEO Bob Dudley explained in an interview with a Brazilian magazine that was quoted in a British newspaper. ‘It is cheaper, less polluting and more efficient than that from corn, for example, produced in the US. Brazil has also a huge advantage in relation to its competitors. The climate and soil are ideal and the sugar cane crop does not have to compete for areas with food crops, as happens in the case of America.’.. europeanenergyreview.eu