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CommentMay 28 2012

Ethanol shakes up the energy mix

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.
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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.

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