The expansion of the ethanol market could contribute to fighting climate change if the trade barriers in the developed economies are removed, said World Bank president Robert Zoellick, in a nod to Brazil's desire to boost its alternative fuels.
The statement from Zoellick, who served as the U.S. trade representative from 2001 to 2005 and was a harsh adversary of Brazil in international trade talks, was transmitted by video to the G8+5 Legislators Forum on Climate Change, held in Brasilia, Feb. 20-21.
The forum drew lawmakers from the Group of Eight (G8) most powerful countries, and from five emerging economies -- Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa -- and was promoted by GLOBE (Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment) and the COM+ Alliance, a partnership of international organizations and communications professionals.
The G8 comprises Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States.
The legislators discussed a document on plant-based fuels -- seen as less polluting than fossil fuels -- that included six criteria for sustainability and the need to establish a certification system for ethanol and biofuels to be recommended for mitigating climate change.
The reduction of carbon emissions resulting from decreased deforestation in the Amazon jungle in the last three years was 500 million tons, she pointed out, by way of comparison.
A more detailed defense of ethanol (made from sugarcane in Brazil) was left to Marcos Jank, president of the Sao Paulo Sugarcane Industry Union, whose membership includes more than half of Brazil's ethanol production.
Ethanol means reductions of more than 60 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions from gasoline, said Jank.
Sugarcane, with 500 years of history in Brazil, has for the past three decades provided energy-efficient ethanol, and, more recently, electricity from the biomass of cane pulp. Production today costs just 30 percent of what it did when the gasoline substitution program began in 1975.
Growth in productivity was spectacular, and with the new hydrolysis technology, which will make use of the sugarcane leaves and other parts of the plant that make up two-thirds of its biomass, output could be twice the current production of 7,000 liters per hectare, according to Jank.
In the future, this food crop will no longer be known as "sugar cane", but rather "electricity and ethanol cane," he said.
But the "sensationalist" news and widely disseminated opinions have distorted what could be a solution, even if only partially, in the fight against climate change, said the industrial union leader.
Production of ethanol from corn and sugar beets in the United States and Europe -- which also have erected high barriers on ethanol imports --, environmental concerns and the scandal of cane workers subjected to conditions of slavery in Brazil have generated a wave of rejection that is slowing the creation of a global biofuel market, in which Brazilian ethanol would be a major player.
In Jank's opinion, there is an abundance of "speculation" that ignores concrete data, like sugarcane energy efficiency, which is much greater than corn or sugar beet.
The charge that expansion of sugarcane threatens the Amazon makes no sense either, he said, because sugarcane does not adapt to the humid climate of the jungle, but rather needs the climate found in the region of Sao Paulo state, the leading producer.
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