Day 3: Brazil Ethanol Special Section

A special section of THE DAILY ADVERTISER • November 3, 2007

Photos by Marcelo Min / Agéncia Fotogarrafa

Clockwise from top left: The skyline of Ribeirão Preto is punctuated by a growing row of business and residential skyscrapers through the heart of the city. (Right) Housekeepers, janitors and other day laborers leave the posh condominium skyscrapers of Avenida João Fiusa at 5 p.m. to return to working-class neighborhoods across the city. (Lower left) Bicycle riders and pedestrians move up and down the wide walkable sidewalks along Avenida João Fiusa in front of new residential buildings under construction.

FROM STRUGGLING FARMS TO

BOOM CITY

Brazil’s ethanol investment has lessons for local economy RIBEIRÃO PRETO, Brazil — If you have to ask how much it costs to live here, you probably can’t afford to. In northeast São Paulo state, where 80 percent of Brazil’s sugar cane and ethanol comes from, Ribeirão Preto is a boom-city that owes much of its success to the country’s focus on biofuels. Property costs are rising by the minute, luxury skyscrapers sprout downtown as fast as the cane does, and imported car dealers time their sales to the beat of sugar and ethanol markets. “I’ve been here 15 years, and all this neighborhood doesn’t exist then,” said Carlos André Angerami, a real estate agent serving posh new Avenida João Fiusa, where $400,000 condos sell up to a year before construction. “They’re building a market for the rich.” Deemed the Brazilian capital of agribusiness, Ribeirão Preto has profited as much from agriculture as Lafayette has from oil. Rapid growth fueled by the wealthy has led to a lopsided real estate market, widening of the pay gap and debates over master planning for future growth.

Born through the soil The city was started in 1856 by farmers in southeast São Paulo state looking for good climate and soil to grow coffee. They found both in Ribeirão Preto, where practically anything grows in the rich red soil (called terra roxa, or “purple earth”) that’s flatter than most other parts of the state. Year-round sunshine spawned the city’s nickname, “Brazilian California,” and 1,400 to 1,500 milliliters of rain per year fall here just when the crop needs it. “The temperature is much more warm in Ribeirão Preto because it’s four hours north from the coastal end of the state,” said

Eduardo Cunali, who was raised in the region’s cane industry and now runs two John Deere farm equipment dealerships. “Sunny, long days, those are the most important items to sugar cane region of Brazil. ... That is here.” By the 1880s, this city was the world’s largest coffee producer, and the boom caused a rush of European immigrants to come and work for rich local coffee barons. It all came to a halt when the New York Stock Exchange crashed in 1929. Ribeirão Preto’s economy was based solely on coffee, and U.S. buyers disappeared. As the city rebounded over the next 30 years it learned not to put all its economic eggs in one basket. Lafayette’s oil bust in 1985 taught the same hard lesson. State oil extraction peaked in 1969, and Lafayette rode through the OPEC oil embargo of 1973 on momentum and steady demand for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Almost 70 percent of local jobs hinged on fossil fuel exploration in particular. New wells were rampant in the early 1980s, but plummeting oil prices sent a ripple effect through any city that lived and died by oil and gas. By 1986, local unemployment was at 14 percent. “Everyone in Lafayette suddenly realized they were in the oil and gas industry, whether they were or not,” said Larry Sides, president of Sides & Associates, and

local Chamber of Commerce president in 1989. “You saw a lot of property ‘For Sale’ signs, many signs, in some of the nicest neighborhoods. Everyone realized just how much every aspect of our community was tied to (oil).”

An ethanol artery In the 1940s and 1950s, Ribeirão Preto began developing a new niche as the region’s education hub, where seven public and private universities are now established. The city also built itself up as a medical center for the state’s northeast corner, a region of 80 cities totaling 3 million people. The second big agriculture boom hit in 1975, when Brazil, then reliant on ã importers for 75 percent of its oil, responded to the OPEC embargo with a national ethanol fuel program called ProÁlcool (ProAlcohol). Heavy government subsidies convinced Ribeirão Preto farmers to focus on cane for new ethanol mills, built by investors with federal backing. The region’s rich soil turned it into one of the world’s most profitable areas for sugar and alcohol. Farms there now contribute about 30 percent of the whole country’s sugar canebased fuel, and one of the first major intrastate highways built mid-century connected Ribeirão Preto like a fuel artery to metropolis São Paulo, four hours

to the south.

The diverse rebirth Tax revenue flowed into Ribeirão Preto not from massive farms that surrounded it, but new businesses tied to the farming and ethanol plant industries, said Afonso Reis Duarte, finance secretary for the city government. “Our taxes from sugar cane is less than 10 percent of our total,” he said. “But the multiplying effect with businesses that deal in it has a major impact.” Sertãozinho, a city of about 80,000 some 40 minutes west of Ribeirão Preto, is considered the brain of Brazil’s ethanol techindustry. It’s home to some 50 mills and 500 companies supplying every type of sugar and alcohol equipment imaginable, nicknamed “Ethanol Silicon Valley” as an epicenter of álcool research and development. Following the cane boom, farmers and investors diversified the region to include oranges, cotton, rice, meat and dairy in its agriculture, and built up a textiles and manufacturing sector, too. It’s now one of the fastest developing cities in Brazil, trailing only São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and the nation’s capital, Brasília, for new money flowing into banks and local investments, Duarte said. In Lafayette, the crash helped local leaders look hard at what the city had to offer other than oil and gas. Tourism and health care quickly came to the forefront. Festival International de Louisiane was started in 1986 to boost the city’s morale and image. And in 1989, Sides and the chamber started the Gateway Lafayette Project, a $1.1 million effort to relocate the tourist information center to its current spot on Evangeline Thruway from the opposite side of town. See BOOM CITY on Page 2

Stories by Bob Moser • [email protected] • Go to theadvertiser.com/ethanol for photos and more information on the ethanol industry in Brazil •

2 • The Daily Advertiser

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007

ETHANOL

n. A clean-burning, high-octane, renewable fuel additive made from grain or other biomass sources

Separating fact from fiction about fuel Myth: Ethanol will harm car and truck engines. Fact: Every major automobile manufacturer approves up to 10 percent ethanol-blended gasoline in their warranties. Cars built since the 1970s are fully compatible with E-10 unleaded. Ethanol is considered a high-value additive that boosts a car’s octane and performance, eliminates the need for antifreeze, prevents burning of engine valves and stops buildup in fuel injectors. Myth: Ethanol raises the cost of gasoline.

Fact: Ethanol costs less than other oxygenates and octane

Continued from Page 1

Boom City “Companies volunteered to move it, all the trees out there were planted by Boy Scout groups,” Sides said. “We created an attractive gateway to our community.” UL President Ray Authement is credited with expanding engineering and science departments during the down period that are now key parts of UL’s technology niche. UL also started a Microbusiness Development Center meant for very small entrepreneurs trying to start fresh after an oil or gas layoff. Today, about 50 percent of Lafayette’s economy is tied to the energy industry, said Gregg Gothreaux, CEO of the Lafayette Economic Development Authority. The local oil and gas influence is now mostly service companies that can respond to global needs, and are less dependent on what’s being explored in any one region. “We will always need energy as a society,” Gothreaux said. “So to be involved in the energy business as a community is good because that’s an economy that won’t go away.”

Dealing with growth Construction crews building stucco homes, rush-hour traffic and new minimalls look the same in Ribeirão Preto as in Lafayette. But the Brazilian boom-city has a plan in place to manage growth, and already has multiple historic, walkable mixed-use areas where residents shop, work, eat and live all within a few blocks. Behind Duarte in the city government conference room hangs a map of Ribeirão Preto with a yellow border of the city limits. “New real estate is only inside the yellow,” Duarte said. “(Developers) can’t build outside the yellow but some special construction … and if we allow the infrastructure must be built by the construction company, water and electricity lines, so they prefer to be near the urban area.”

Comparative city statistics:

Ribeirão Preto Population - 550,000 Total area - 252 square miles City Budget - U.S. $445 million Lot size/price 3,013 sq-ft lot / $75,000

Lafayette Population - 119,485 (as of July 2006) Total area - 48 square miles (city) City Budget - $548 million Lot size (River Ranch)/price 4,800 sq-ft patio home / $75,000

enhancers for gasoline, and is less expensive than ordinary gas. Blending ethanol with gas lowers the fuel station price more as oil prices keep rising. The Consumer Federation of America reported in May 2005 that drivers should be saving 8 cents to 10 cents per gallon if petroleum marketers blended more ethanol into gasoline.

Myth: Ethanol takes more energy to make than the fuel itself provides.

Fact: Not true. Critics have mostly cited a 2005 study that claims a negative energy balance for ethanol, but it was cowritten by a former oil company employee. New reports show corn ethanol provides 20 to 50 percent more

energy than used to make it. Other feedstocks such as sugar cane provide more energy.

Myth: Using corn and grains for fuel is why food prices are rising. Fact: Higher corn prices are only a small factor behind food prices, and oil plays the biggest role. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Conner said in October that about 80 cents of every retail dollar spent on food goes toward processing, packaging, distribution and marketing costs. They’re all primarily impacted by rising energy costs. U.S. ethanol is made mostly from field corn, which feeds livestock and humans don’t eat. The starch portion

of a corn kernel is what goes toward ethanol, which usually has low value. The protein, minerals and fiber-part of the corn are called distillers grains and sold as high-value livestock feed. A 56-pound bushel of corn in the dry mill ethanol process yields 18 pounds of distillers grains.

A job infusion Ethanol in the U.S. now creates more employment in rural areas than any other economic activity. The biofuels industry supported more than 160,000 new jobs in 2006 throughout the economy, and boosted U.S. household income by $6.7 billion, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. There were 119 ethanol plants and more than 85 currently being built or expanding, compared to 16 two years ago. Brazil had 369 ethanol plants running this year, with 44 more under construction, another 59 as approved projects, and 232 more in planning stages. Some 712,000 people worked in ethanol plants or cane farming as of 2005, according to the São Paulo Sugarcane Agroindustry Union. “If we build an ethanol infrastructure you’re going to need all kinds of people we could be educating,” said Leon Labbe, head of UL’s renewable resources department. “Government regulatory and inspectors, technicians for plants, lab testing — the potential here for

CONTENTS 2 • Careers created High-tech jobs change the face of agriculture

3 • The backbone of the industry

Myth: Ethanol contributes to global warming.

Myth: Ethanol is unfairly subsi-

Fact: Blending 10 percent ethanol into gasoline reduces greenhouse gas emissions 18-29 percent compared to regular gas, according to research by Argonne National Laboratory. Approximately 8 million tons of harmful emissions weren’t put in the U.S. atmosphere in 2006 due to ethanol use, equal to taking 1.21 million cars off the road.

dized.

Fact: There is a 51-cent-a-gallon federal credit that costs taxpayers about $2 billion per year, most of which goes to oil companies that blend it with gas, not farmers. The U.S. has subsidized the oil industry since the early 1900s. According to the General Accounting

Careers created PIRACICABA, Brazil — A sweet, gritty taste of hand-cut sugar cane between the teeth reminds Carlos Roberto Manochio Jr. why he gave his life to agriculture. Ten-foot-high stalks grew everywhere he looked as a child in rural São Paulo state. It’s the richest region for cane growth in Brazil, the world leader in sugar production and ethanol export. All a kid like Manochio needed was a pocketknife and some patience, and summer days were always better with slices of sugary stalk to chew and suck dry. “I never get to do this anymore,” said Manochio, 28, from a cane field owned by Cosan Costa Pinto, one of the largest sugar and ethanol mills in Brazil. He passed on farming to become an agronomic engineer, staying close to the cane he loves by learning how to make it grow taller and faster. Brazil’s government started a national ethanol program in 1975, and by the mid-1980s rural youth like Manochio saw agriculture and any science related to it as the “future profession.” “We believe that now we’re in the future,” he said. Brazil’s booming ethanol industry spawned new markets for farmers, foresters and a host of technical industries. Similar growth is already being seen throughout the United States, and Louisiana’s budding ethanol industry could expect the same.

Office in an October 2000 report, Big Oil has received about $130 billion in tax incentives in the past 30 years, much more than the roughly $11 billion provided for renewable fuels.

High-tech jobs change the face of agriculture

Photos by Marcelo Min/Agéncia Fotogarrafa

Engineers monitor every aspect of the Santa Elisa sugar and ethanol mill in Sertãozinho, Brazil, from one control room.

Career in biofuels If you’re seeking a job in the ethanol industry, or are an employer looking for qualified help, visit www.ethanol-jobs.com our environmental science or agriculture science students is great.” Brazil’s ethanol infrastructure may be growing faster than its supply of qualified engineers. For each unit of energy generated in Brazil, oil creates one job, coal production makes four and ethanol 152, according to the Interamerican Ethanol Commission, a world biofuels advocate based in Coral Gables, Fla. Growth in general business, paper and steel mills are just a few competiting industries drawing away chemical, mechanical and electrical engineers needed by men like Luiz Biagi. He co-owns Sermatec and Renk Zanini, machinery manufacturers for ethanol and sugar processing, and owns nine mills in São Paulo. Between them all he employs 27,000 people, but 300 jobs remain vacant, many entry-level engineers for mills that start at U.S. $42,000. “When students leave the university they are automatically employed in these areas,” Biagi said. “Engineers we get have come from the countries around Brazil,

6 • Other countries getting into the game As global warming concerns push ethanol progress around the world, Brazil stands to profit

7 • Where cars run on sugar cane

Cane cutters work the fields with few protections

Flex-fuel vehicles give Brazilians choice at the fuel pump, and most choose ethanol

4 & 5 • Global energy demand

8 • Time for change

Illustration of where the world’s oil and ethanol are headed

A reporter’s commentary on the future of U.S. biofuels

A technician examines parts of a new turbine and electricity generator in the factories of Renk Zanini in Sertãozinho, Brazil. The country’s ethanol industry is expanding too quickly for domestic training of engineers and technicians to keep up. like Chile and Argentina.”

Higher yields, fewer farmers Most new jobs in the industry aren’t in farming, and U.S. agriculture has become more efficient in the past century. From 1964 to 2007, the number of sugar cane farmers hauling to Cajun Sugar Cooperative in New Iberia dropped from 220 to 60. But

the tonnage ground per day rose from 4,000 to 1.2 million. “There were 46 mills then, there are 11 mills now,” Thibodeaux said. “It’s economies of scale, but we still grow more cane than ever.” Less than 5 percent of graduates from LSU’s College of Agriculture now work on a farm after college,

See CAREERS on Page 3

ONLINE Find expanded coverage of the ethanol industry in Brazil and Louisiana’s potential @theadvertiser.com/ethanol.

• • • •

multimedia audio slide shows an interactive map photo galleries from Brazil continued coverage

• Go to theadvertiser.com/ethanol for photos and more information on the ethanol industry in Brazil •

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007

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The backbone of the industry

Cane cutters work the fields with few protections

SERTAOZINHO, Brazil — His eight hours are nearly up, but Valdeci Nascimento’s sore, sweaty, soot-covered hands wield a machete that he can’t stop swinging. He hacks away at the base of naked sugar cane stalk in a field with 45 other workers, shielding mocha skin from the tropical heat under a ragged ballcap and sweat-soaked long-sleeve shirt. The faster he cuts, the more he’s paid. At about U.S.$1.50 per ton of cane, Nascimento, 33, builds as many car-sized piles of stalk as possible to make his grunt work worth it. This is the muscle that moves Brazil’s mammoth cane ethanol industry. As much as 75 percent of Brazil’s sugar cane crop, which fuels the nation’s ethanol-reliant infrastructure, is still harvested manually by about 500,000 men and women like Nascimento. Most are migrants from the country’s northeast, where jobs are scarce and interest is high in seasonal labor offered in southern “cane country” states such as São Paulo.

He doesn’t want to be here

It’s the second year Nascimento left his wife and two kids in northern Ceará state to cut cane for seven months in São Paulo, the largest ethanol-producing state. With debts to pay at home and few good jobs, Nascimento headed blindly to cane country hoping for a contract with a sugar or ethanol mill. They pay well, have on-campus housing and cafeteria dining. But Nascimento wasn’t so lucky. He signed with one of many agents who place workers on plantations. Known for their dishonesty, workers call an agent like this a “gato” — Portuguese for cat. The gatos provide food and housing but handle workers’ money, some taking large cuts for their trouble before giving workers what they’ve earned. Nascimento made $6,000 real (the Brazilian currency) over six months last season, but he thinks his cut will come to only $4,000 real ($2,200 U.S.)

Continued from Page 2

Careers

said Dean Ken Koonce. Enrollment is steadily increasing, but of the 2,100 graduate and undergraduate students, most focus on the business side and textile merchandising, not the traditional plant and animal sciences that lead to farming. “The interest of students in agriculture isn’t as great as it has been,” Koonce said. “But I think farming will change, the production scale will be larger, more people will be getting in for non-food production (for biofuels), and production systems will change. “Going into biofuels and competing with petroleum products seems

this time. “I really want home now,” he said. “I don’t like this job.” In Piracicaba, a city in central São Paulo, the rural workers union’s No. 1 fight is to stop the large local mill, Cosan Costa Pinto, from contracting with gatos for cheap labor. In late July, the state sanitation office busted a house of 10 migrant workers for living in filth. “If you’d seen it, you’d throw up,” said union lawyer Marcelo Duarte. The gato would be held liable for this and other crimes, but they’re good at avoiding police, said Jacob Bortoletto, union vice president.

Pushed to produce From 2000 to 2005, 312 cane and ethanol laborers died while working, and about 83,000 suffered accidents on the job, according to Brazil’s Social Security Administration and Bloomberg news service. Heat exhaustion and sun-induced fever are common ailments Nascimento said workers suffer from. Sugar cane cutters suffer about eight times as many injuries as laborers in Brazil’s citrus and grain industries, though cane makes up only 1 percent of the country’s total agriculture. These jobs may become extinct within the next decade, when producers must switch over to mechanized harvesting in order to reduce air pollution. Before humans can harvest sugar cane, the fields must be burned to clear out sharp leaves and snakes. Switching to mechanical harvesters would eliminate the practice, which shoots thick, black ash into the air and is considered a major contributor to respiratory disease in São Paulo. Mechanized harvesting will be mandatory by 2014 in São Paulo, where field-burning is being outlawed. And as cane acreage expands, a mechanical harvester does the work of 60 to 80 men in a day, said Erlon Avelar Pereira, spokesman for Cosan’s Costa Pinto mill in Piracicaba.

to be a made-to-order opportunity for agriculture, which has been struggling because of world competition and the costs to make food. Biofuels is really a godsend to save agriculture, … and the oil price going up constantly will make biofuels competitive, and gets us in the same ballgame.”

‘Treasure chest of potential’ U.S. researchers are on the cutting edge of cellulosic technology, an important step toward making ethanol profitable long-term. Chemistry, biology and engineering majors are who’ll move refiners beyond the basic sugar or cornstarch crops used for ethanol now, and into converting grasses, crop leftovers and even algae into fuel, plastics and thousands of chemicals currently made from petroleum. “We’re sitting on a treasure chest

Photos by Marcelo Min/Agéncia Fotogarrafa

(From top): Seasonal sugar cane workers share a moment in the kitchen of their Piracicaba rental house the night before many will unexpectedly lose their jobs cutting cane. (Above) A cutter stops to quench his thirst in a nearly-cleared cane field in Sertãozinho, Brazil.

‘Nowhere else to go’ When police respond to complaints it can be bittersweet for the union’s cause. Two years ago, federal police closed some gato-run houses in Piracicaba for violations, Duarte said. The next day 150 people came to the union office crying, suddenly without housing or jobs. “They had nowhere else to go, nothing else to do,” he said. When a two-bedroom gato-house in Piracicaba was raided for health violations in July, 10 workers living there were out of jobs. Some caught on with another farm, but seven had to leave by Aug. 7. On the eve of his departure, 18-yearold Edlanio Pereira was at a loss. He borrowed to get here from northern Paraíba state thinking he’d have the whole harvest to save. But more than half his earnings are earmarked for the middleman, and Pereira doesn’t have enough for a bus ticket home. “Now what can I do?”

of potential here,” said Mark Zappi, dean of UL’s College of Engineering. “Biomass and biorefineries of the future will produce tens of thousands of products. It’s just as organically rich as petroleum.” Zappi is helping position UL to lead Louisiana’s research and economic development-efforts for a biochemicals industry, after doing the same for Mississippi over the past 12 years. “There’s feedstock, or growing, that LSU AgCenter is on top of, and we’re partnering and collaborating with them,” he said. “But our contribution is the processing side … We’ve had a very deliberate hiring strategy over the past couple years to come in and well-establish ourselves in this. We want to produce top grads and undergrads, and research and counsel to policymakers and the industry.”

Marcelo Min/Agéncia Fotogarrafa

Cutters make quick work of cane stalk in the same field, flash-burnt on the outside to remove sharp fronds and scare off snakes.

• Go to theadvertiser.com/ethanol for photos and more information on the ethanol industry in Brazil •

The Daily Advertiser • 5

4 • The Daily Advertiser

GLOBAL ENERGY DEMAND Middle East. World oil production is expected by U.S. energy analysts to peak by 2037, followed by a permanent, steady decline. It’s why renewable fuels like ethanol are being taken seriously now, and the U.S. and Brazil are leading the effort.

The United States leads the world in oil consumption, burning up more per year than the next four biggest consuming nations combined. We’ve made less of our own oil over the past 10 years and now import 65 percent of the oil we need, becoming more reliant on countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia and an unstable

U.S. energy facts

Top world oil producers, 2006

Top world oil consumers, 2006

Top world ethanol producers, 2006

(Production in thousands of barrels per day)

(Production in thousands of barrels per day)

(Millions of gallons, includes all ethanol grades)

20,588

Brazil energy facts

4,855 4,491

10,719

301 million

9,668

8,367 4,146

3,836

Brazil

Saudi Arabia

Russia

United States

Iran

China

2007 estimated population

5,222 3,706

3,289

2,938

Size comparison

U.S.

190 million

7,274

2007 estimated population

Mexico

3,103

2,785

2,802

Canada United Arab Venezuela Emirates

Norway

United States

China

Japan

Russia

2,630

2,534

Germany

India

1,017 2,218 Canada

2,183 Brazil

2,157 South Korea

2,068

502 United States

Saudi Arabia

Brazil

China

India

251

202

171

153

122

102

France

Germany

Russia

Canada

Spain

South Africa

Source: Energy Information Administration

9,161,923 sq.km.

Top world ethanol producers

total land size.

Top U.S. oil producing states

Top U.S. corn ethanol producing states

8,456,510 sq.km. total land size.

Source: Renewable Fuels Association

Top 5 oil importers to U.S. Top 5 ethanol importers to U.S.

7.4%

GREENLAND

18.01%

Percentage of farmland used for growing crops.

Percentage of farmland used for growing crops.

(Less than 1 percent used for sugar cane, which is already meeting nation’s ethanol needs.)

119

Number of ethanol plants, as of 2007.

North Sea

369

Number of ethanol plants, as of 2007.

NORTH AMERICA RUSSIA CANADA

Corn

Primary source of ethanol.

0-10%

Sugar cane

EUROPE

FRANCE

Primary source of ethanol.

UNITED STATES

Percentage of ethanol in regular gasoline.

Pacific Ocean

25%

Atlantic Ocean

E-85

Percentage of ethanol in regular gasoline.

CHINA

(85% ethanol) Main ethanol-based fuel.

MEXICO

Louisiana’s sugar production, by parish

3.5%

EL SALVADOR

(In millions of pounds)

Iberia Assumption Iberville Pointe Coupee Lafourche St. Mary St. Martin St. James Vermilion West Baton Rouge

86

Number of ethanol plants under construction/expanding. By 2010, U.S. ethanol production could displace the equivalent of 311,000 barrels of crude imported oil per day — more than one large oil tanker per week. ■

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

JAMAICA

Top 10 raw sugar producers, 2006:

Percentage of total fuel consumption.

SAUDI ARABIA

COSTA RICA

327 259 252 212 195 193 190 145 123 104

E-100 (100% ethanol) Main ethanol-based fuel.

INDIA

ASIA

AFRICA NIGERIA

VENEZUELA

40%

Percentage of total fuel consumption.

BRAZIL

Indian Ocean

SOUTH AMERICA

44

AUSTRALIA

Number of ethanol plants under construction/expanding. 59 more as approved projects, 232 in planning stage.

■ Oil accounts for about 99% of U.S. transportation fuel supply, 65% of which is imported. ■ The Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that, by 2025, the U.S. will import 71% of its petroleum needs.

Sources for U.S. and Brazil Energy Facts: Renewable Fuels Association; CIA World Factbook; Jose Luiz Oliverio, vice president of Technology and Development for Dedini; Energy Information Administration; Interamerican Ethanol Commission; Louisiana MidContinent Oil & Gas Association.

Source: LSU AgCenter

An ethanol timeline

Brazil Source: UNICA (Såo Paulo Sugarcane Agroindustry Union)

1975: Brazil’s military government starts national ethanol program, named “Pro-Alcool,” to wean itself off foreign oil — which supplied almost 80 percent of its fuel at the time. Large public and private investments supported by the World Bank helped expand sugar cane farming and construction of alcohol distilleries. Large-scale use started as a gasoline additive of 20 percent.

OPEC oil crisis

1970

1976: Government mandates only ethanol be used in Brazilian motorsports, a move meant to boost acceptance.

1977: All fuel stations in Brazil required to offer ethanol (law remains today).

1975

1978: All taxis, police cars and vehicles used by state-run utilities have to run on ethanol.

1979-1980: Iranian Revolution leads to second world oil shock. Brazil orders automakers to start making ethanolpowered vehicles for domestic sale. Companies had been modifying traditional engine designs to meet growing demand for vehicles to run on ethanol, which had problems. Now, they’re producing a newly designed engine.

1984: Alcoholonly cars account for 94.4 percent of automanufacturers’ production.

1986: Oil crisis passes. Government support for alcohol production and new vehicles wanes. World demand for sugar rises, and mill owners focus more Brazilian sugar cane on this, abandoning supply of national alcohol production.

1985

1980

1989: Alcohol supply crisis reaches peak, Brazilians are upset they bought new cars and now ethanol costs more than gasoline. The annual production of alcohol-only vehicles drops quickly to 10 percent in 1990, then 0.06 percent of factory output in 1997 (about 1,075 vehicles), settling at 1.02 percent in 2001.

1990-1999: Dropping demand for hydrated alcohol (100 percent) for alcohol-only cars was countered by growing popularity of small, light cars in Brazil, and mixing of unhydrated alcohol in gasoline for those cars. All Brazilian gasoline is required to have 20-25 percent alcohol mixed in, which the government oversees, and adjusts based on supply and demand of sugar and alcohol throughout the year.

1995

1990

2000: Brazil’s Society of Automotive Engineers leads development of a new flex-fuel engine, which has complex software able to calibrate immediately to any fuel mix, all the way up to 100 percent ethanol.

2003: Volkswagen marks its 50th anniversary by debuting the first commercial flex-fuel car, its Gol TotalFlex. General Motors brings its first flex-fuel vehicle to market.

2005: Seventythree percent of new cars sold in Brazil came with flex-fuel engines.

2006: 1.3 million flex-fuel vehicles on Brazilian roads.

2005

2000

2007: Automakers approach making 100 percent of new cars as flex.

2010

U.S. Source: Energy Information Administration

1974: The Solar Energy Research, Development, and Demonstration Act led to research of converting cellulose and other organic materials (including wastes) into useful energy or fuels. There’s no celluloseconversion plant operating today.

1975: U.S. begins to phase out lead in gasoline. Ethanol becomes more attractive as a possible octane booster for gasoline.

1978: Gasohol is defined in the Energy Tax Act of 1978 as a blend of gasoline with at least 10 percent alcohol made from renewable feedstocks. The law amounted to a 40 cents per gallon subsidy for every gallon of ethanol blended into gasoline.

1979: Marketing of commercial alcohol-blended fuels began. Amoco Oil Company began marketing commercial alcoholblended fuels, followed by Ashland, Chevron, Beacon, and Texaco. About $1 billion to go to biomass related projects from the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriation Act.

1980: Less than 10 ethanol facilities existed, making 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. Congress enacted a series of tax benefits to ethanol producers and blenders, loan guarantees for small producers to build plants, and purchase agreements for ethanol.

1980: Congress placed an import fee (tariff) on foreign-produced ethanol. Previously, foreign producers, such as Brazil, were able to ship less expensive ethanol into the United States.

• Go to theadvertiser.com/ethanol for photos and more information on the ethanol industry in Brazil •

1983: Ethanol subsidy rises to 50 cents per gallon.

1984: Ethanol plants in the U.S. peaked at 163. The ethanol subsidy to 60 cents per gallon.

1985: price crash pushes ethanol producers out of business, despite the subsidies. Only 74 of 163 ethanol plants stayed open by end of year.

1997: Major U.S. auto manufacturers began mass production of flexfuel vehicle models able to run on E-85, gasoline, or both. Done mostly by automakers to tap into environmental credits, E-85 fuel is available almost nowhere.

1998: The ethanol subsidy of 54 cents per gallon extended through 2007, but will be reduced gradually to 51 cents per gallon in 2005.

1999: Some states began to pass bans on MTBE, an octane additive in gasoline, because traces were showing up in drinking water sources, presumably from leaking gasoline storage tanks. Ethanol as an alternative additive to take MTBE’s place.

2000: EPA recommended that MTBE should be phased out nationally.

2002: Over 3 million E-85capable vehicles in use, though only 169 fuel stations in U.S. offer E-85.

2003: A total of 18 States had passed legislation to ban MTBE. California began its ban in January 2004, creating a large demand for ethanol.

2007: 4.5 million vehicles on U.S. roads capable of E-85 use, and more than 1,300 fuel stations offer it (of 179,000 total stations). Most are concentrated in the upper Midwest where corn and ethanol plants are located. Oil refiners receive a 51-cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol they blend into gasoline.

• Go to theadvertiser.com/ethanol for photos and more information on the ethanol industry in Brazil •

6 • The Daily Advertiser

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007

KYOTOPROTOCOL

An international agreement in which 36 countries are required to cut greenhouse gas emissions to near-1990 levels by 2012.

Ethanol hasn’t hindered oil exploration In the deep waters off Brazil’s southeast coast, new discoveries of oil — not ethanol production — are a big reason why this nation could be energy-independent in 2006, and be considered a player in world fuel supply for the foreseeable future. Following the 1973 OPEC oil crisis, Brazil was importing nearly all its oil and began heavily subsidizing a new ethanol industry. But at the same time the state-owned oil company, Petrobras, was pioneering deep-water exploration techniques now mimicked around the world, and studied by UL students. “Brazil knows more about deep water than anyone; most of their reserves are in deep water,” said Ali Ghalambor, head of UL’s petroleum engineering department, which has had an exchange program with students from Brazilian universities for the past four years. Today ethanol makes up about one-third of the fuel Brazilian vehicles burn, and the country says by

2010 that could reach 50 percent. But for 27 years, the country’s oil production has grown about 9 percent annually, too. Brazil is now one of the top 15 world oil producers, and nearing a goal set by 1970s leaders to eventually be a net exporter. Even with the ethanol boom, Brazilians knew they’d always need oil, and Louisiana’s oil and gas industry can take comfort in the same. Every gallon of ethanol added to U.S. fuel should go toward displacing the 3.7 billion barrels of oil imported yearly first, which fills 65 percent of the U.S. demand. “Ethanol isn’t going to replace fossil fuels, it isn’t a silver bullet, there’s no such thing,” said Brian Jennings, executive director of the American Coalition for Ethanol. “Ethanol is one very important alternative to reducing our reliance on foreign sources of oil.” Louisiana is the No. 1 producingstate of crude oil in the U.S., and No. 2 in refining capacity, according to a

2006 study by the Louisiana MidContinent Oil and Gas Association. Energy jobs are found in all of Louisiana’s 64 parishes, and Lafayette has the most with 15,241. The industry believes more oil lies off each U.S. coast, in Alaska and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, Ghalambor said. Drilling is limited or off-limits in some of these areas for environmental protection, but domestic oil production has decreased elsewhere by about 1 billion barrels per year in the past decade. “I think this country has a lot of fossil fuel resources not being used,” Ghalambor said. “You never know, if 15 years from now an energy crisis prompts pressure to tap the Atlantic or (Alaska’s) natural wildlife preserve.” There’s profit to be made in a partnership with ethanol, something Brazilian oil embraced from the start that some U.S. companies haven’t.

Claudia B. Laws/[email protected]

An employee works on Rig 754 in Kaplan, for Grey Wolf Drilling Co. on Oct. 8. “Petrobras is now constructing two major pipelines through the country for ethanol,” said Roberto Ardenghy, superintendent of fuel supply for the Brazilian National

Petroleum Agency. “We make so much ethanol here they need pipelines going from major producing areas to the shores, so we can export ethanol to the world.”

Other countries getting into the game Investors flocking to Brazil for tips on biofuels technology

U.S. Ethanol Imports by Country (millions of gallons)

PIRACICABA, Brazil — At least twice a week, executives here at Dedini’s headquarters pencil in time to let delegates from around the world window-shop their ethanol plant-making process. Dedini, the world’s largest maker of complete ethanol mills and their parts, is a Brazilian-born success story poised to profit as the world pursues biofuels. About 80 percent of ethanol distilleries in Brazil are Dedini-made, and 25 have been sold abroad. More than 8,000 investors and public officials visited the headquarters here last year from Asia, Africa, Europe and North America, eager for a peek at the multi-million dollar pricetag to build their own biofuel industries. Climate-change concerns have become a global rallying point, and ethanol production is ramping up worldwide. France is turning beets to fuel, the U.S. relies on corn, and wild grasses and farm debris are the non-food answer everyone is working toward. But in the meantime, Brazil’s sugar cane-derived ethanol is the cheapest, most efficient form to copy, and cane-producing nations are attracted to Brazil’s example. “People are studying it, but no orders yet,” said José Luiz Olivério, vice president for technology and development at Dedini. “But we can expect a huge amount of (ethanol mill) projects in the future.”

2005

2006

Brazil

31.2

434

Costa Rica

33.4

35.9

El Salvador

23.7

38.5

Jamaica

36.3

66.8

0

24.8

Trinidad & Tobago Total

135 653 Source: Renewable Fuels Association

sorghum stalks this summer. Farmers can get sweet juice from the stalk for biofuel and still use grain at the top for food, doubling their income on a crop that’s cheap to grow. Manufacturers like Dedini don’t need the world market just yet because Brazil’s ethanol growth continues to boom. Brazil’s 4.5 billion gallons in 2006 (No. 2 behind the U.S.) is expected to double by 2013. As of June, 369 ethanol mills were operating, 44 were being built, 59 were approved projects and 232 were in early planning as investors predict increased exports, Olivério said. By 2010, 472 ethanol mills may be operating in Brazil. “But this is going to produce enough (ethanol) only to feed the internal market, because flex-fuel cars are growing so much,” Olivério said. “And no one in Brazil will think to build a plant without talking to Dedini first.”

Using the Caribbean

World demand grows He’ll bank on it because of treaties like the Kyoto Protocol, in which 36 countries vowed to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels, from 2008 to 2012. If those countries blended just 10 percent ethanol in gasoline, the world would need an extra 20.2 billion gallons of ethanol to supply demand in 2010. That’s on top of 12 billion gallons made in 2006 by the top 15 producing nations combined. Most consuming countries will need to chip in to meet that demand. “It’s very important for ethanol to be a world product,” Olivério said. “If only Brazil produces, this will never be. People won’t trust only one supplier; it needs to become a commodity.” In March, President Bush visited Brazil to talk with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva about expanding world ethanol production. They signed an agreement to develop biofuel technology and private investment in other countries, a key step in building a global ethanol industry. Brazil’s Lula spent much of the summer and fall in Latin American and European countries promoting ethanol partnerships. Within 15 years a global biofuels industry would “democratize energy access,” Lula told The New York Times in September. “Instead of 10 countries producing oil, we could have 120 countries producing biofuels.”

Country

Marcelo Min/ Agéncia Fotogarrafa

A welder works inside a new distillation tower being built at Dedini’s sugar mill and ethanol plant factory in Piracicaba, Brazil.

Nations find a niche Some 50 countries are promoting and developing ethanol infrastructures. Of those, 27 have set blending goals for ethanol in gas, and 39 have passed laws to develop biofuels. Since 2002, China has moved toward a 10 percent blending mandate for ethanol in its gasoline to avoid foreign oil and improve nation-

al security. It’s now the world’s third largest ethanol producer, and third in sugar cane production. Malaysia is the world’s leading palm oil exporter, and produced about 200 million liters of biodiesel in 2006 from it, serving mostly European biodiesel stations. India, a distant second to Brazil’s dominance in world cane growth, had states agree in October to a 10

percent ethanol mandate starting in October 2008. It’s expected to help the country’s troubled sugar mills find additional profit. Countries in Africa’s rainfall belt, such as Angola, Zambia and Mozambique, have the best potential to grow high-yield crops suitable for ethanol or biodiesel. India also produced its first commercial batch of biofuel from sweet

Some of the fastest ethanol development has been in the Caribbean and Central America. The U.S. has a free-trade agreement allowing 7 percent (268 million gallons) of U.S. ethanol consumption to be imported tax-free from this region. In 2006, 206 million gallons of ethanol came into the U.S. from here, but much of it was originally Brazilian. Many ethanol plants being built there, backed by Brazilian investment, simply dehydrate Brazil’s ethanol and send it to the U.S. to mix with gasoline. For U.S. refineries and fuel stations on the East Coast, buying Brazilian ethanol via the Caribbean is often cheaper than shipping corn ethanol from the Midwest. It’s a loophole to get around a 54cent-per-gallon tax the U.S. places on imports straight from Brazil. The tax protects U.S. ethanol producers from being undercut by cheaper biofuels, and keeps Brazilian ethanol from being subsidized in a way by U.S. taxpayers. At least nine dehydration plants in the Caribbean are running or planned, Olivério said, and Dedini has made four. Brazil’s ethanol exporters think the U.S. tax, which may expire in 2010, is at most a violation of free trade, and at least a barrier for the U.S. to reach renewable fuel minimums by 2017. “Everyone believes that with your own production, the U.S. can’t reach Bush’s goals,” Olivério said.

• Go to theadvertiser.com/ethanol for photos and more information on the ethanol industry in Brazil •

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007

The Daily Advertiser • 7

Where cars run on sugar cane Consumers get more options in flex-fuel economy

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — When Eulair Deberaldini glances across the lot of a Rede Papa fuel station, he sees the difference between choice and dependence in how much cash drivers fork over to fill their tanks, and smiles at his flex-fuel Chevy Vectra. “This car to fill with alcohol is $50 Brazilian real, compared to $100 real for gasoline,” Deberaldini said through a translator. “Fuel choice is very important, and flex-power saves me money.” Americans like to talk about choice at the fuel pumps, but Brazilians are living it. Almost all of the 34,000 fuel stations in Brazil offer álcool (100 percent ethanol) or gasolina (itself a 25 percent ethanol mix), and since flex-fuel cars took off in 2003 drivers can mix and match any amount they wish. It’s a given most consumers will favor ethanol, which was $1.04 per liter to gas’ $2.27 when Deberaldini stopped to fill up in August.

Choice leads to trust Brazil’s 30-year effort to develop ethanol as a viable alternative to gasoline took a huge leap forward four years ago, when automakers introduced flexfuel vehicles. Before that, Brazilian carbuyers had already been burned by an ethanol boom that went bust in the 1980s, and were reluctant to invest in cars that used only ethanol. Volkswagen, Ford and General Motors developed a computer chip smart enough to sense whether gasoline or ethanol was in the tank, and could adjust the engine’s air intake. Consumers jumped at the chance to pick and choose which fuel to use. Now, eight of 10 new vehicles in Brazil are flex, and by 2013, flex-cars are expected to be 50 percent of all light vehicles in Brazil. “Here it’s about people valuing the price of the fuel in a price of the car,” said Maroio Demenis, manager of Itacolomy Vehicles, a Chevy dealership in São Paulo city. “The market has changed like 100 percent, now all the new cars we sell are flex. … And for two similar used cars, flex and non, the flex will be about $1,500 more because of demand.”

Flex grows in U.S. Detroit automakers have produced about 6 million flex-fuel vehicles in the U.S. since the mid-1990s. You may be driving one but not even know it. The technology went into pickup trucks and sedans just to meet quotas for environmental credits. But pushed by rising gas prices and global warming news, leaders of GM, DaimlerChrysler and Ford vowed this year to double production to about 2 million cars a year by 2010 — 20 percent of their planned production. They even say half of all their cars could be flex if the fueling infrastructure were in place. Access to ethanol is still the main problem. There are currently 1,326 E-85 stations in the U.S., of 170,000 total. Oil is

Photos by Marcelo Min/Agéncia Fotogarrafa

(Top right) Eulair Deberaldini chooses the green álcool pump at Rede Papa fuel station in São Paulo. (Right) Mechanics prepare an older car for a flex-fuel adaptor kit at TecNolvel auto repair shop in São Paulo. (Above) Assembly-line workers build nearly all flex-fuel vehicles at a General Motors plant in São Caetano. distributed by pipelines, but ethanol must move by rail or truck right now to avoid water in pipes it could absorb. Louisiana’s first E-85 pump opened in Sulphur this July at Pumpelly Oil Company, not enough yet to fuel the 120,000 flex-fuel vehicles in the state. They’ve built a strong following with E85, said Ashley Berken of Pumpelly, even if pricing it about 20 cents cheaper than gas now isn’t enough to cover the energy gap. Ethanol burns cleaner in the engine and has higher octane, giving your car more horsepower, a main reason the IndyCar series switched to E-100 for its races this year. But high mixes like E-85 get fewer miles per gallon than gasoline because ethanol has about 30 percent less energy. For the equal miles-per-dollar, if unleaded gas costs $2.75, E-85 should be about $1.95, according to some fuel calculators

online. “It just depends on what bang the customer is looking for,” Berken said. “If they’re only looking for mileage then yes, gas is better. But if they’re looking at all the advantages — environmental, less reliance on foreign oil, better for your engine — taking all those benefits into account, that $1.95 can be up to $2.55 or so.” Current U.S. flex engines aren’t taking full advantage of ethanol’s mileage and performance benefits. Researchers and big automakers are looking at advanced combustion systems to help engines better burn the biofuel. Swedish automaker Saab, a branch of GM, has made a BioPower concept car to run on up to E-100, just like Brazilian flex-cars. It has double the horsepower of a current U.S. flex, burns ethanol more efficiently and has a smaller engine to cut the car’s overall weight.

“Saab came here to learn to develop this, two to three years ago,” said Adhemar Nicolini, general director of GM Powertrain in Brazil. “They started from advice we gave them.”

Helping old cars flex Brazilians who can’t afford a new flex vehicle can pay the equivalent of U.S.$440 to convert their gasoline engine to flex. At TecNolvel auto repair shop in São Paulo, mechanics attach a microprocessor the size and shape of a laptop’s power adapter under the hood. It’s mounted between a car’s computer and fuel cylinders, with wires connected to each injector to adjust air based on the fuel it senses. Brazil’s álcool has a small amount of water that on cold days could freeze. So a plastic gas reservoir the size of a softball is added near the engine, which sucks a

bit of gas from that to start if needed. “The consumers are doing it not exactly because they want a flex-car,” shop owner Florinaldo Quinino said, “but because of the fuel prices.” In Boise, Idaho, Alex Conger has been giving the same fuel-flexibility to U.S. drivers for two years, based on a converter he and partners bought in Brazil. “We figured we can either reinvent technology or we can go with the guys who’ve been doing it for 20 or so years,” said Conger, owner of Full Flex International. About six companies market flex converters in the U.S. that can be installed in practically any car, he said. With prices ranging from $250 to $500, Conger has sold about 4,000 units in Europe and the U.S. A few warranties and misinformed mechanics are the biggest obstacles to flex-converter popularity, he said.

The other alternative fuel — biodiesel Soybeans, animal fat, dirty cooking oil and sunflowers are just a few sources for biodiesel — the oft-ignored but more prolific brother of ethanol. It’s the only biofuel Louisiana currently makes en masse. Two years ago, 2 percent of the U.S. soybean crop went into biodiesel; this year, as much as 12 percent is estimated. This no-hassle biofuel mixes at any amount with petro-diesel, and burns in engines with few or no modifications needed. Biodiesel can be transported in pipes while ethanol can’t, and has 3.2 units of energy for every one unit used to make it. But the main feedstock for biodiesel — soybeans — is a food first. Its rising world price has made U.S. and Brazilian investors second-guess their biodiesel plan.

State law is a draw “The biodiesel in Louisiana has taken off like wildfire with all our farmers and loggers, and fortunately in America,” said Darrell Dubroc, president and chief operating officer of Allegro Biodiesel’s plant in Pollock. He built a Louisiana biodiesel market from scratch, serving trucking fuel stations in Alexandria, Ville Platte, Shreveport, Houston and even exports to Europe.

cal. But one small Brazilian town may have found a solution.

Biodiesel sold in the U.S.

2000

‘A slice of the whole’

2004 2005 2006

25

50

75

100

125 150

175

200

225

250

(millions of gallons)

“Most of our personal cars are gas, and in the U.S. maybe 10 to 15 percent of light vehicles on the road are diesel,” Dubroc said. “In Europe, it’s more like 40 percent, mostly Volkswagens. Biodiesel is a more superior product to ethanol.” There are 165 biodiesel plants operating in the U.S., and 84 under construction or expansion. Allegro’s Pollock plant opened in April 2006, and two more plants are in planning or construction phases near New Orleans. All were drawn to Louisiana by a 2006 state law mandating the 2 percent mix of biodiesel in all diesel sold here, once production hits a benchmark. “From a logistics standpoint, our position has been for this to go mainstream it has to integrate into the oil and

Source: National Biodiesel Board gas infrastructure,” said Jeff Trucksess, executive vice president of Houstonbased Green Earth Fuels, which awaits permits for a New Orleans plant. “Louisiana has that. It has the agriculture, it has the vegetable oil infrastructure, so we think it’s one of the prime areas of the country.” Dubroc said Allegro has already hit that mark, but U.S. biodiesel faces the same costly hurdle as ethanol: Reliance on food-crops with a rising price. Booming Asia demands more soy, and the Midwestern corn rush has boosted soybean’s market price for next year to $9 or $10 per bushel, up from the $5.50 farmers made in recent years. So biodiesel made from soybeans has become increasingly less economi-

From the depth of a farm crisis one year ago, Lucas do Rio Verde, a town of 35,000 in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, is primed to bounce back with a multipronged industrial attack that’ll fuel cars, animals, people and the economy. The nation’s largest biodiesel refinery should open here this fall, making 32 million gallons per year and using 500,000 tons of soybeans from central Mato Grosso. Alone it wouldn’t profit much due to the high price of soybeans. But to cut costs and maximize profit, three industries in the soybean food chain have been brought together here by local government and business leaders. A crushing mill will squeeze out the soy oil, just 18 percent of the bean, sending that to the fuel refinery and the leftover meal to huge barns to feed chicken and hogs. A new slaughterhouse will turn those to meat, at a rate of 500,000 chickens and 7,000 hogs per day. “There isn’’t one other spot on the whole planet that has put all of this together in such a synergistic fashion. Biodiesel is just a slice of the whole,” said Kory Melby, a consultant for U.S.

agribusiness investors, who moved to Mato Grosso four years ago from Minnesota.

Other incentives

Brazil’s mandated mix of 2 percent biodiesel kicks in soon, and 41 plants are expected to make twice as much from soy oil as the nation needs. With another 40 plants proposed, a mandated 5 percent-mix in 2010 would still leave 80 percent more biodiesel than needed. Soy oil’s high demand would price Brazilian biodiesel at $2.20 Brazilian real per liter, when regular diesel now sells for $1.80. “It’s not smart now; you got to be stupid to make (biodiesel) from soybean oil,” Melby said. “Our food chain is taking priority.” Brazil’s biodiesel future is turning toward non-food sources like jatropha, a bean animals won’t eat that’s heavy on oil, requires little water and grows in almost any environment. Science is also coming to the rescue. U.S. researchers are developing soybeans with twice as much oil, Dubroc said. But they’re most excited about algae, growing it near smokestacks to eat pollution fast enough to make 16 times the biofuel in a year as corn.

• Go to theadvertiser.com/ethanol for photos and more information on the ethanol industry in Brazil •

8 • The Daily Advertiser

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007

TIME FOR CHANGE By Bob Moser

After spending two weeks in São Paulo, Brazil, in early August, I boarded the plane for home feeling like a million bucks. The country was beautiful, the food was fresh, and the pride I found Brazilians took in their peace and relative self-sufficiency was refreshing. I got back to Lafayette and sank from this high fairly quickly. News that first night of more war deaths, rising oil prices and the woes of local farmers were like weights around my neck, pulling me back down into a day-to-day reality we’ve

come to expect and accept in the U.S. I admire Brazil for seeing in 1975 that energy independence was worth the hassle of subsidies and uncertainty to build an ethanol industry from scratch. Seeing and reading about success with alternative energy elsewhere in the world has drawn my patience thin for progress here at home. A “can-do” attitude toward biofuels, solar and electric-hybrids over the next decade would be nice to see in U.S. automakers and

energy companies. Now it’s exciting to see the U.S. Congress possibly boost the renewable fuels mandate in a new Energy Bill. It could require fuel refiners to blend 36 billion gallons of ethanol into gasoline by 2022, ensuring demand long enough for investment and ingenuity to give Americanmade ethanol some firm legs to stand on. Comparing the U.S. and Brazil certainly isn’t apples to apples. Differences in climate, culture and government allowed Brazil to become a biofuels success story

fairly quickly, and it’s important for reporters like me to point this out. We may make mistakes with ethanol, fuel cells or electric vehicles along the way. Brazil took 30 years to get all its ethanol ducks in a row. I hope this series will give readers some perspective to see that maturation of alternative energy in the U.S. could be worth the growing pains. Bob Moser covers business, regional growth and agriculture for The Daily Advertiser. Contact him at [email protected].

ABOUT THE TEAM

ABOUT THIS PROJECT Bob Moser A 23-year-old reporter with The Daily Advertiser since September 2006, Bob traveled throughout São Paulo state of Brazil for the first two weeks of August on a World Affairs Journalism Fellowship administered by the International Center for Journalists, and funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. He can be contacted at [email protected], or at (337) 371-3362.

Arnessa M. Garrett A 37-year-old senior editor/news for The Daily Advertiser, Arnessa managed the planning and design of this project. She has worked in Lafayette for five years and in print journalism for 15, with previous stints at The (New Orleans) TimesPicayune, and The Boston Globe. Marcelo Min A 38-year-old photojournalist from São Paulo, Marcelo co-owns Agéncia Fotogarrafa, a freelance news photography agency. Before starting the agency two years ago, Marcelo worked for newspapers and magazines in São Paulo for 11 years. His work can be viewed at www.agenciafotogaraffa.com.br. Ursula Alonso Manso Dutra e Silva A 35-year-old freelance journalist living in Rio de Janeiro, Ursula assisted Bob with appoint-

Garrett

Min

Dutra e Silva

ments and translation in Piracicaba and Ribeirão Preto. She worked as a reporter and editor for a newspapers in Rio for 12 years before switching to freelance writing and assisting foreign reporters in the past four years. Anna Flávia Rocha e Silva A 25-year-old reporter for an energy trade magazine in São Paulo, Anna assisted Bob with appointments and language translation in São Paulo and Piracicaba. She has studied for a

Rocha e Silva

Johnson

semester at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, and worked as a reporting intern for Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C., before starting her journalism career in Brazil. Bram Johnson A 27-year-old graphic designer, illustrator and co-owner of WORKagencies, a design firm in Lafayette, Bram designed the logo for The Daily Advertiser’s ethanol series, and laid out the pages of this section. Bram’s work can be viewed at www.workagencies.com.

• Go to theadvertiser.com/ethanol for photos and more information on the ethanol industry in Brazil •