Ethanol from sugar cane: a successful alternative energy strategy for Brazil

Pro-Alcool the National Alcohol Program began in 1975 and was a government financed program, developed on account of the petrol crisis of 1973, and fortified due to the second impact of 1979. This program aimed to substitute gasoline with ethanol from sugar cane on a grand scale, thereby reducing the dependence on imported petroleum. During the decades to follow, as the international price of petrol went down, the program entered a decline. With cheap petrol, alcohol fuel held little advantage either for the consumer or the producer. In the same period that petrol prices were lowering, the price of sugar began to rise on the international market, which made sugar production more profitable than alcohol. Technological developments in bi-fuelled cars, soon to be followed by world pressure for less polluting fuels, together with successive petrol price peaks, not only revitalized alcohol production but also led to a demand for its increase. Thirty years after the appearance of Pro-Alcool, Brazil is in a rhythm of expanding cane-fields and new technology aiming at better efficiency. All this is being performed on a grand scale, both for internal consumption and the international market, in order to present ethanol from sugar cane as alternative fuel.