Blog

"To kick the season off, I’ll be in Stockholm this week to talk about second generation biofuels, and in particular the outlook for ethanol produced in Brazilian bio-refineries. I thought it was a good opportunity to give you a short overview of what I’ll cover.
Renewables make up for around 40% of Brazil’s overall energy mix. That’s right, 40%. With a share of around 16% of this mix, sugarcane is the number one source of renewables in the country. Hydropower – the number one renewable in Europe – only comes second in Brazil. Today, sugarcane is used for two things mostly: sweetening your coffee and running cars on ethanol (mainly the juice), and producing bioelectricity (bagasse). "

"Considering the traffic these days in Brussels, it really looks like EU institutions are back to school, and so are we!
And talking about traffic and transport, the months ahead will be rich of news in the sector."

The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (“UNICA”) this week submitted formal comments to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency opposing changes to the proposed Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) volume targets for 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Today, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is visiting Washington, D.C. to strengthen the relationship between two of the Western Hemisphere’s biggest nations. But as with any successful relationship, compromise is key on important issues, and President Rousseff plans to discuss several three issues critical to the global ethanol trade with President Obama.

Here we are! The ILUC file is finally over and now it seems that no one wants to hear more about biofuels, especially the Commission. However, biofuels are alive and kicking and there has been evidence of their presence in the past few weeks!

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff yesterday signed a decree creating tax parity between domestic and imported products, including ethanol.

I recently attended a conference in Brussels on the negotiations of the Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA). Quite disappointingly, ethanol is not part of the list of green products falling under the scope of the agreement. The biggest challenge of the negotiations is indeed about deciding on the list of products. Every country promoted a list of products, but ethanol was not part of any of the lists suggested, despite its proven environmental benefits.

The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (known by the acronym "UNICA") issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's rules proposal for the 2014, 2015, and 2016 Renewable Fuels Standard. It should be attributed to Elizabeth Farina, UNICA President.

This year’s theme of the Universal Exposition EXPO Milano 2015 “Feeding the planet. Energy for life” couldn’t be more spot on for us!

After the disappointment of not winning concessions from Member States on any of their main points, MEPs have – against the will of many – voted in favour of the Council ILUC text. Now it’s time to turn the ‘ILUC page’ and look beyond 2020. Policymakers need to set up a credible framework for the post-2020. Low-ILUC biofuels should be promoted and sugarcane bioethanol is one of those.

Updates to CARB’s indirect land-use change (ILUC) modeling and carbon intensity lifecycle analysis reinforce a key fact – sugarcane ethanol is the most environmentally friendly biofuel supplying today’s market.

I just can’t help praising the decision taken by the Brazilian government to increase, today, the ethanol blend in gasoline to 27%. A question came straight to my mind: Is the EU not simply lagging behind? Is it not incredibly ironic to see Europeans getting cold feet about moving to a 6.5% content of ethanol (in energy) in petrol?

Today, the European Parliament’s Environment committee adopted a second reading position on the ILUC dossier, and I’d like to congratulate MEPs for many of the points they expressed through their vote.

"Well before we started thinking about our New Year’s resolutions, the European Commission published on 16 December its work programme for 2015. We can only applaud the targeted nature of measures envisaged and this new Commission’s desire for better regulation. However this ‘to do list’ seems to be overlooking some crucial aspects, that we hope the Commission will address in the course of 2015.

On 4 December 2014, the Environment Committee in the European Parliament held a public hearing on air quality and on national emissions beyond 2020. Emissions from road traffic were naturally discussed and the debate focused, as expected, on testing methods.