Neotropical Eco FOundation

This article will look at the use of Ethanol as a substitute for gasoline to fuel passenger cars. There is a broader question, which involves so called Bio-diesel, based primarily on soy oil, which we will touch on, but the details will be left for a future in-depth look.

The Economics

In Brazil and the US there is an increasing movement toward the use of ethanol as an additive or total substitute for gasoline to power the fleet of passenger cars in both countries. The introduction of ethanol as a motor fuel in Brazil in the 1970's put the auto industry through some development difficulties but today the technology is mature and stable. The flex-fuel cars on the road today, in Brazil and the US, are efficient at any level of fuel mixture. In the state of São Paulo, where the bulk of Brazilian ethanol is produced, ethanol costs less than 60% of gasoline, making it a very attractive alternative, if your car will burn it.

If on the consumption side the case is clear, the energy efficiency of the production side is less so. The latest reliable studies indicate that the energy balance of the production of ethanol from corn is marginally positive: the process produces more energy than it consumes. If you consider only the liquid fuels used, gasoline and diesel, Vs. the ethanol produced, the balance is very positive, something like 7 for 1. Additionally, considering the result of the phasing in of cellulosic ethanol, it can be said with a fair degree of certainty that the use of ethanol as a substitute for gasoline, fully or partially, is energetically, if not economically, justified.

The purely economic justification depends on two further factors, neither of which will be discussed here: the price of petroleum and the level of subsidies allocated to ethanol. In any case, when you consider that petroleum is finite, whereas the production of ethanol is sustainable (?), there seems no choice but to support the use of ethanol as a motor fuel.

Based on the economics, and current levels of subsidies, it is safe to say that ethanol will play an increasing role as a motor fuel., but there is a negative side, and that needs to be understood and minimized if a disaster is not to be created.

Brazil, already in the midst of the soybean cycle, is regressing back to the colonial sugarcane cycle, showing the behavior of a compulsion to be the country of the future as described by Stefan Zweig in his 1942 book. Brazil is bringing back one of its original and damaging colonial extractive cycles, the sugarcane plantation, which devastated the most important forest on the continent, taking away species that will never be seen again, plants that may well not be used again. Looking at the economic aspect, a few "families" are again to be benefited with the profits of exports, forgetting the large majority of the population which was kept marginalized, exploited and under employed.

The legacy of sugarcane is the extermination of 95% of the Atlantic Forest. This forest was the biggest concentration of plant and animal species on the planet, much more important than the Amazon Forest. The Atlantic forest contains many different biomes (ecosystems) in the same forest - compositions like the Caatinga (White forest), the coastal forest, the mangroves, the Restinga (vegetation in the sandy coastal plain), and the highland biomes like the Mantiqueira mountains and the Serra do Mar.

The extermination of the Atlantic forest continues to the present time. The green desert takes its place, forming dry rivers, desertification, salinization and erosion, altering the climate and destroying the habitat of many avian, mammal and plant species in its damaging march forward.