Brazil biofuel strategy pays off as gas prices soar

Could a similar transition happen in the US?

Brazil biofuel strategy pays off as gas prices soar - washingtonpost.com
by Dan Morgan -- Updated June 18, 2005

PRADOPOLIS, Brazil - Outside the cavernous Sao Martinho refinery, the air smells of molasses as a quarter-mile-long caravan of trucks piled high with sugar cane waits to unload cargo, signs that the world's largest sugar harvest is moving into high gear.

Such bumper sugar crops have often meant worldwide gluts, low prices and headaches for politicians in the more than 100 countries where sugar cane is grown, but not this year in Brazil. About half the cane brought here will be made into ethanol as part of a 30-year gamble to substitute fuels made from crops for imported oil. As international oil prices soar, that bet has put Brazil at the forefront of a 'biofuels' movement in which many countries view sugar cane, corn, soybeans, beets, cornstalks and native grasses as cleaner, money-saving substitutes for oil produced in politically unstable countries. Ethanol is higher in power-producing octane than most gasoline and
can reduce tailpipe emissions of carbon monoxide and harmful particulates.