Feasibility studies? Corporate Espionage is more like it.

I hope Brazil is patenting their technology up the arse. Every tiny little inflection of it. And I hope they’re not using coal-fired plants to process their sugar cane bi-products. And I hope they’re looking into licensing their technology on a global scale.

Europe has more sugar than it can sell. So they’re going to want to re-engineer that end of the business. And they’re probably going to want the ethanol also. Africa’s just making sugar also. And they’re going to be hurting from the market the EU is going to take back this year. And that goes for Asia too. License the technology as a function of productivity. Just like Copier companies lease the machines and sell the copies.

Subsidize the manufacturing (no need to be too generous (depending on who the client is)) to license the technology by the barrels produced.

Sell them management training. Information systems. People want to do business with friends. Use it as an excuse to make friends and look for ways to give everyone a leg up. There’s going to be lots of opportunities. The Corporate Mass Media has systematically under-reported the life and times of Africa (and Asia and Latin America (to a lesser extent but nevertheless)) for a good reason.

They’re exploiting ignorance.

The growth of ethanol production in the United States is going to be hampered by environmental considerations. We have to get very loud about this. Increasing Carbon Emissions — so you can tell everyone that you’re working hard to reduce Carbon Emissions — is just the kind of stupid thing a Corporation and its lapdog government would do.

I’d say this would be a good way to fund alternative energy R&D. Get the ethanol profiteers from two sides and make ‘em pay. We can use the ethanol.

OPEN QUOTE

Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, said, “We’ll be watching very closely to make sure that someone doesn’t morph this into a mechanism or a tool for sucking U.S. taxpayer dollars to Brazil or other countries.”

END OF QUOTE

WHAT a pendejo.

The US taxpayer has never done anything but subsidize corporate greed. Any US dollars that have been “invested” in Brazil have been for the sole purpose of endebting and enslaving that economy. Do we know that Monte knows that?

No. Actually. We don’t. He could just be a doofus.

OPEN QUOTE

Brazil, a pioneer in ethanol production, has been replacing gasoline with the alternative fuel for 32 years. But although Brazil currently is the leader in ethanol technology, the United States, with its superior capacity in R&D, is likely to make faster progress in terms of producing ethanol from cellulose

PAUSE

Maybe. Maybe not.

FORWARD

The Brazil-U.S. agreement is also aimed at fomenting a global biofuels market, with the definition of technical rules and regulations. To this end, the two countries will work together in the International Biofuels Forum, in which India, China, South Africa and the European Union are also participating.

In terms of bilateral trade, the Brazilian government and business community are calling for the elimination or reduction of U.S. tariff barriers to Brazilian ethanol, which is taxed at 54 cents per gallon, plus a 2.5 percent tariff.

But Bush said the tariff, which was extended to 2009 by the U.S. Congress, would not immediately be removed.

PAUSE

Quelle Surprise

FORWARD

The association between the world’s two largest ethanol producers, which account for around 70 percent of all ethanol production, could have broad repercussions. An agreement between Brazil and the United States, for instance, could help unblock the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha Round of multilateral trade talks, said Lula.

The new biofuels fever also modifies the global outlook in agriculture, holding out possibilities of opening up solutions to the dismantling of farm subsidies shelled out by the United States and the European Union, which are the biggest obstacle in the Doha Round.

PAUSE

I gotta tell ya. I think that Lula guy is smart and ours.

FORWARD

To develop the biofuels market, the Brazilian government has already offered cheap loans to companies interested in building plants. The public National Bank for Economic and Social Development provided nearly one billion dollars in financing towards that end in 2006, and could raise that amount by 25 percent this year.

Over the next six years, Brazil will open one ethanol factory a month on average, bringing the total number from the current 336 to 409 by 2013.

END OF QUOTE

As long as those factories aren’t in Brazil, I think we’ll be fine.

“An OPEC for ethanol is impossible, because alcohol will never be able to substitute for oil,” Venezuelan expert Alfredo Michelena told IPS. “However, it could replace a small percentage of U.S. fuel consumption, equivalent to the oil supplies it receives from Venezuela,” he added.

END OF QUOTE

Oooooooooooooooooooooh. Pow pow pow. Do we think Alfredo might be from “The Opposition”?

ALCOHOLS / ETHANOL
Question #1: Can ethanol from corn or other grain replace gasoline?

Answer: Almost certainly not, for several reasons.

There isn’t enough grain. The best process we have makes about 2.66 gallons of ethanol from a bushel of corn (maize). The 2004 maize harvest was about 11.8 billion bushels; if all of it was used for ethanol, it could make a maximum of 31.4 billion gallons of ethanol (with energy equivalent to about 22 billion gallons of gasoline). US gasoline consumption in 2003 was roughly 134 billion gallons, or more than 6 times the amount which can be replaced by ethanol production from corn. Total US motor fuel consumption (gasoline and diesel fuel) is approximately 200 billion gallons per year.

Ethanol requires too much other fuel to produce it. A gallon of ethanol (84,200 BTU) consumes about 33,000 BTU of heat in the distillation process alone. Some of this heat comes from coal or cogenerators, but most distillers burn natural gas or LPG. LPG is a petroleum byproduct, and natural gas supplies are tight and getting tighter. Ethanol producers are competing with people who need to heat their homes. The energy losses of the ethanol process make it more efficient to burn the grain for heat, and use the LPG or natural gas as motor fuel (source).

We are in deep.

Justice then Peace.