Michael Daly wrote:
On 11-May-2006, Tony Hwang wrote:

Brazil is self-suffcient
on fuel producing lots of ethanol. U.S. could do it too. and why not?.

A lot of people are mentioning Brazil as if it was some kind of ideal example.
That is certainly not the case. They did not convert to ethanol for environmental
reasons - they did it to control their balance of payments and trade deficits. It
wasn't necessarily cheaper and a lot of Brazilian drivers hated the ethanol fueled
cars. It took a while before the were able to get cars that ran well on ethanol.
Now that the technology has settled down, Brazilian drivers still resent the ethanol
fuels (sort of like North American drivers that are still cranky about pollution control
equipment on their cars - there's no problem with it, just a perception based on the
relatively poor performance of the first pollution controlled cars in the '70s.)

Brazil's ethanol industry is based on sugar cane, which is not a good source. It
was relatively plentiful and they couldn't get as much money exporting sugar as
converting it to fuel. The US, for examples, blocked sugar imports with trade
restrictions and a propped-up US price to support US sugar businesses - like
sugar beet.

Ethanol has to be based on a marginal crop that can grow without intense
farming techniques. Otherwise, it will cost more energy to make than to use.

Mike


All good points Mike. This is another example of how only a part of
the story gets told and how people go off half cocked. Another key
point to the Brazil story is they didn't just use Ethanol to become
energy independent. Last week there was a picture of the President of
Brazil on an offshore oil well, turning the valve on, bringing it
online.

Yet, if you talk about drilling off shore in most areas of the US, the
environmental extremists all come running around telling you it
shouldn't be done. Then they point to the wonders of Brazil as an
example of how to achieve energy independence, hoping nobody will
notice the truth.

The reality is we should be pursuing multiple solutions. Opening up
more areas to drilling *(ANWAR, offshore, etc), building nukes, ethanol
provided it's cost effective, wind, more research on solar, more
conservation, etc. But anytime you try to do almost any one of these,
some nuts show up to **** and moan and stop it.