Looking for an ethanol sweetner

AP/NY Times:

With the market for corn-based ethanol booming, lawmakers from sugar-producing states are hoping that beet and cane growers can soon jump onto the renewable fuel bandwagon.

They cite the model of Brazil, which produces ethanol made from sugar cane. But critics, pointing out that sugar is much cheaper in Brazil than in the United States, question whether the economics of sugar-based ethanol would work in America.

''Brazil is a unique situation,'' ConocoPhillips Co. Chairman James J. Mulva said. ''Brazil is self-sufficient in energy ... not so much because of ethanol. It's because they have a very strong, growing, thriving oil production, both onshore and offshore.''

The Agriculture Department is expected to issue a long-awaited study around July 1 on the viability of converting sugar into ethanol.

Keith Collins, the USDA's chief economist, said the soaring demand for ethanol and Brazil's successful track record make it worth discussing sugar-based ethanol in the United States.

''At some point in the future it may be worthy of commercial development,'' he said. ''Technologically, it's possible. The question is: Is it economically feasible?''

Collins noted that besides cheaper sugar, Brazil has higher yields per acre because of climate and investment in more-productive strains of sugar cane.

...

If the US did away with its sugar subsidies, and let the market set the price, I suspect that yields would increase and the sugar growers could get a piece of the ethanol market. Right now it is much cheaper to import sugar and if it were to be used for making ethanol, the imports would be the most cost effective way to produce the product.

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