SINCE 2003, ETHANOL AT TOP OF LULA ADMINISTRATION'S PRIORITIES

Three years ago, when the world still hadn’t woken up to the need for biofuels, oil cost under thirty dollars a barrel, and Brazil was synonymous only with soccer and samba, BNDES, Brazil’s federal national development bank, held a major seminar on the ethanol industry.

The 2003 event, called “Ethanol – Potential Producer of Capital and Jobs”, was held on August 25th and 26th, in the city of Sao Paulo.

The seminar anticipated the current optimistic mood in Brazil toward the ethanol market and indicated the industry’s importance to Brazil and the (then new) Lula administration.

Its purpose was to “discuss the necessary measures to boost Brazil’s great potential (in the ethanol business), so that the country might become a relevant world supplier of renewable fuels, particularly ethanol”.

Important agents from the sugar and ethanol industry, equipment manufacturers, fuel distribution, agricultural technology, government, financial institutions, and investors participated in the seminar, whose aim was to act as a catalyst for business related to ethanol exports.

The event was attended by, among others:

Marcio Fortes de Almeida - Minister of Development, Industry, and Foreign Trade
Anderson Adauto – Minister of Transportation
Roberto Rodrigues – Minister of Agriculture, Cattle, and Food Supply
Dilma Vana Roussef – Minister of Mines and Energy
Roberto Amaral– Ministro of Science and Technolgy
Carlos Lessa – BNDES, President
Clayton Campanhola – Embrapa, President
Ildo Luis Sauer – Director of Gas and Energy, Petrobras
Professor José Walter Bautista Vidal

Several panels were presented, including:

Brazilian ethanol and its capacity to compete in foreign markets
Agricultural frontiers in Brazil
Foreign demand for ethanol
Multilateral negotiations: Kyoto, FTAA, and WTO
Industrial expansion
The effects of co-generation of electricity on ethanol production
Logistics for ethanol transportation

This event was not a watershed in the Brazilian ethanol business - it was simply one more in a long series of events that have been held routinely in Brazil since the 1970s. These include seminars, conferences, and conventions, which discuss several issues related to ethanol.

It is interesting to note how the ethanol market overlaps what used to be distinct fields, such as agriculture, energy, and transportation, as demonstrated by the diversity of government authorities that attended the event.

American producers, before spending lavishly on R&D for ethanol, would do well to examine the Brazilian case more closely and learn from the country's 31-year experience with a sizable ethanol-powered fleet.

Follow what's happening in the Brazilian ethanol market on Ethablog, the only blog in English dedicated to Brazilian ethanol.