With oil prices rising ever higher, interest in ethanol as a green fuel is growing, with the world's largest economies – Brazil, China and the US – already involved in production.

Not everybody agrees on the causes or severity of climate change – or, indeed, that it is an issue – but one thing is undeniable, one of the main polluters of the world, oil, will run out eventually. And in the meantime, its price is likely to get higher. What to do about it?

Brazil developed its very own solution to oil dependency in the 1970s, with the Pró-Álcool programme which encouraged the production of sugar cane ethanol. Despite criticism by some for being inefficient and simply a legacy of the grand ambitions of Brazil’s authoritarian regime at the time – ethanol did address the oil crisis that erupted in 1973. And it should receive larger attention now too.

Brazil decided that ethanol was to be mixed with road fuel early on, and created flex-cars, which can run on either the green fuel or gasoline or a mix of the two, which has spurred production since 2000. Its fuel market, however, is skewed because gasoline prices are capped, providing an unfair advantage to the fossil fuel. All the same, the prospects for ethanol are set to improve.

The US, a producer of corn ethanol, is discussing the elevation of the so-called blend wall – the percentage of ethanol in road fuels – from 10% to 15%. The US is the second largest car market in the world; Brazil is the fourth. Together, they produce more than 85% of the world’s ethanol and are the first and second exporter, respectively. But corn ethanol is more expensive to produce, and impacts more strongly on the food chain, leaving the field wide open for sugar cane.

The world’s largest car market, China, itself a producer of corn ethanol and one that experiences stronger tensions in its agribusiness sector, may be the ultimate dream for Brazil’s ethanol producers. If the world’s governments are committed to their objectives of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, as they say they are, ethanol will have to be seriously considered as a strong player in their energy mix.

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