Energy Security
Biodiesel in Brazil (Tendências Consultoria)
This is just a press release, since I can’t find the original study. But first, a little background.
Most of Brazil’s cargo system is made by trucks. Its roots are from President Juscelino Kubitschek’s development program, which opted for a automobile industry. Instead of building tracks and trains, Brazil chose highways in the late 1950’s.
Today, not only this is expensive and not efficient, it also consumes a lot of diesel. Nevertheless, the biodiesel program in Brazil is still running slow.
The study published by this brazilian consulting firm shows that biodiesel in Brazil is an opportunity both to decrease the emission of greenhouse effect gases and to reduce the rural poverty. As with sugar cane ethanol, biodiesel competition with food production in Brazil is also not as intense as in other places because of the possibility of using grazing fields for the new production.
Since the international market is still absorbing the idea of producing biofuels, Brazil has a great opportunity to begin producing biodiesel now and to collect the gain in a few years. However, it is very important to use crops that are both financially and ecologically sustainable in order to gain access to important consumer markets. The overseas markets are promising though living deep under protectionism — Brazil also needs to make investments in infra-structure (biodiesel ducts, plants), logistics (ports, highways) and tributary system (since today’s law penalizes the exports of more sophisticated products).
This seems to be a very interesting study, since it approaches several important aspects that I call Challenges for Biofuels. My main focus until early November will be just the environmental side of biofuels, but this study seems to be a good map of the road for what needs to be done in Brazil regarding biodiesel.
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