Posted on November 6, 2009 by sugarcaneblog
Laws designed to limit deforestation in Brazil will increase the need for more intensive farming and ranching to keep up with rising world demand for food, the governor of Brazil’s largest agricultural state told Reuters. “It’s not going to be easy because we are not clearing more land in Brazil for agricultural purposes so we have to set up a strategy to intensify and turn low productivity pastures into high yield cropping areas,” said Blairo Maggi, governor of Mato Grosso state.
Crop production will expand into cattle pastures, said Maggi, who also is president of Grupo Andre Maggi, one of Brazil’s largest soybean producers and exporters. Ranchers will have to find ways to maintain cattle production using a far smaller area, he said through an interpreter on the sidelines of a global soybean conference. As readers of this blog know, that’s just what the Brazilian biofuels industry has been saying. Read more »
Filed under: Climate Change, Deforestation, Enviroment, Ethanol, Food vs. Fuel | Tagged: biodiesel, Biofuels, Brazil, Climate Change, Deforestation, environmental law, Ethanol, ILUC, Soybean | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 5, 2009 by sugarcaneblog
During an interview on Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote his newly released book Our Choice, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore corrected the host’s comments on how any ethanol was worse for the environment.
While the corn ethanol lobby when nuts and reverted the old Washington game of attack, attack, attack, the truth is Al Gore pointed out that there are new and improved forms of ethanol that the U.S. could be using as part of the country’s efforts to fight climate change. (To see and hear Gore’s comments, click here and scroll video to 15:04 time.)
And this is not the first time that Gore defends advanced biofuels as a part of a solution for global warming. For instance, Gore talked up sugarcane ethanol early this year at the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee and just last month again sugarcane ethanol, when he stated that cane cultivation in Brazil is highly efficient both economically and in terms of its energy balance, and can contribute to be produced without deforestation.
Filed under: Biofuels, Climate Change, Deforestation, Enviroment, Ethanol, Food vs. Fuel, Sugarcane | Tagged: Biofuels, Daily Show, environment, Ethanol, Gore, Jon Stewart, Our Choice, RFA | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 5, 2009 by sugarcaneblog
With no Republicans present and Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) voting no, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted 10-1 this morning to approve the Kerry-Boxer bill. “We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott, we have been able to move the bill,” EPW Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in a statement.
Filed under: Climate Change | Tagged: Climate Change | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 5, 2009 by sugarcaneblog
Brazilian petrochemical company Braskem has negotiated contracts for 60% of its sugarcane ethanol-based polyethylene (PE) production and estimates by year-end it will have 70% negotiated, Braskem CEO Bernardo Gradin told journalists at a press conference in São Paulo. “The premium of the ‘green’ PE will be even higher than first expected,” Gradin said, referring to the price of the resin made from 100% renewable sources compared to the naphtha-based product. Read more »
Filed under: Biofuels, Climate Change, Enviroment, Ethanol, Sugarcane | Tagged: bioplastic, Bioplastics, Braskem, Ethanol, Green Plastics, Plastics | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 5, 2009 by sugarcaneblog
In a potential blow to those who seek to protect forests in less-developed countries, a new study suggests that carbon dioxide emissions caused by tropical forest destruction have been significantly overestimated. Research published in the journal Nature Geoscience says the figure the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change presented in 2007 is an overestimate. The panel said that 20 percent of the carbon dioxide produced by human activity was caused by loss of forests in countries such as Brazil and Indonesia. Van der Werf puts the number closer to 12 percent and says the panel figures are based on an exaggerated rate of tropical deforestation and outdated information.
Filed under: Biofuels, Climate Change, Enviroment, Ethanol, GHG, RFS, Sustainability | Tagged: Amazon, Biofuels, Deforestation, Food vs. Fuel, indirect land use changes, Land Use Changes, nature geosicence, rainforest | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 5, 2009 by sugarcaneblog
The US will need to import large volumes of ethanol from Brazil to meet advanced biofuel targets set under the US Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), Karim Salamon, head of research and statistics at the French trading firm Sucres et Denrees, said at F.O. Licht’s World Ethanol 2009 conference in Paris. This week. Read more »
Filed under: GHG, RFS, Sugarcane | Tagged: Brazil, EPA, GHG, Renewable Fuel Standard, RFS, Sugarcane, UNICA | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 4, 2009 by sugarcaneblog
Today’s Los Angeles Times take a look at the battle over trade in biofuels. “Brazilian sugarcane producers say sugarcane-based ethanol is more environmentally sound than electricity or corn ethanol as an alternative for powering cars. But the odds are long for a change. The Brazilian sugar industry’s complaint — which was relayed in person by Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to President Obama at a regional summit in April — points up one of the trickier aspects of U.S. renewable-energy policy that aims to reduce foreign oil imports, cut greenhouse gas emissions and promote the development of a domestic biofuels industry. The U.S. government is trying to assure a growing domestic market by mandating that an increasing percentage of fuel at the pump be ethanol and keeping most of Brazil’s lower-cost ethanol out. But the trade-off forsakes short-term environmental benefits that ethanol made from sugar cane may provide.”
Filed under: Biofuels, Climate Change, Corn, Enviroment, Ethanol, Food vs. Fuel, Lobby, RFS, Sugarcane | Tagged: Biofuels, Brazil, Ethanol, ILUC, LA Times, Lula, Obama, Trade Policy | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 4, 2009 by sugarcaneblog
Brazilian ethanol has become less competitive than U.S. ethanol due to its strong currency, adverse sugarcane crop weather and millers’ preference to make sugar, a senior industry consultant told Reuters. Jonathan Kingsman, managing director of Lausanne-based consultancy Kingsman, told Reuters in a phone interview on Friday that heavy and persistent rainfall during Brazilian cane harvesting had led to a reduction in cane crush forecasts. “We do see a tightening (ethanol) market,” Kingsman said.
Brazil is currently the world’s second largest producer after the United States. Sugarcane is the feedstock for Brazilian ethanol biofuel, while in the United States it is largely corn-based. Pressured by the strength of the Brazilian real currency against the U.S. dollar, and mills’ preference to produce more lucrative sugar than ethanol, the outlook for Brazilian ethanol exports is more subdued in 2009/10 than a year earlier, he said.
Read more »
Filed under: Biofuels, Ethanol, Sugarcane, sugar | Tagged: Biofuels, Brazil, Ethanol, kingsman | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 3, 2009 by sugarcaneblog
Berkshire Hathaway’s $44 billion deal for U.S. railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BSNF) will give it control of the biggest ethanol transporter in the country. BNSF is the largest rail transporter of ethanol in the U.S., handling 74,000 carloads of ethanol in 2008.
Filed under: Biofuels, Blends, Ethanol | Tagged: Berkshire Hataway, Biofuels, BSNF, Ethanol, Railroad, Warren Buffett | Leave a Comment »
Posted on November 3, 2009 by sugarcaneblog
Heavy and persistent rainfall in Brazil will result in almost 10 percent of the cane crop in the center-south of Brazil remaining in the fields, said Marcos Jank, President of Brazil’s Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA).
“If UNICA’s forecast regarding the sugarcane production of 530 million tonnes is confirmed, nearly 50 million tonnes of sugarcane will remain in the fields — this is nearly the Mexican sugarcane production (6th in the Food and Agriculture Organization sugarcane production ranking),” he said at the Nov. 2-5 World Ethanol 2009 conference.
Read more »
Filed under: Ethanol, Sugarcane, sugar | Tagged: Ethanol, sugar, Sugarcane, UNICA | Leave a Comment »
