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Sugarcane and global warming. What do they have to do with each other? Everything, says the Brazilian sugarcane industry, when you consider Brazil's highly successful, 30-year experience with sugarcane as a feedstock for ethanol.
And they explain: In place since the mid-70s, the largest program in the world to replace a fossil fuel with renewable energy has saved some 600 million tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It would take 20 years for six billion trees to achieve the same results.
Details of the Brazilian success story will be presented at a panel this Wednesday, June 24, during Green Week, the largest annual conference on the European Union's environmental policies, scheduled from June 23 to 26 in Brussels.
At its booth in the exhibit area, the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA), the largest organization representing Brazil's sugar-energy industry, will also provide detailed information about the efficiency of large-scale production and use of sugarcane ethanol as a motor fuel to reduce GHG emissions.
In Brazil, the biofuel replaces over half the country's gasoline needs by volume, making gasoline the alternative fuel. Flex-fuel cars introduced in 2003, which run on any mixture of gasoline and ethanol, now account for 34% of Brazil's entire light vehicle fleet and close to 90% of new light vehicle sales.
According to the senior international affairs advisor to UNICA's president, Geraldine Kutas, the idea is to detail the impressive performance of sugarcane in the production of ethanol and other value-added products, and its subsequent impact on Brazil's energy matrix: 46% of it is composed by renewable sources.
"Brazil could be a low-carbon economy. Unfortunately, even though the country is a large renewable energy producer, it is also the fourth largest emitter of carbon, because of deforestation. The fight against climate change requires ambitious public policies and joint leadership from the government and the public sector," Kutas concludes.
The International Energy Agency has recently confirmed that sugarcane ethanol can deliver a verifiable reduction in GHG emissions that can exceed 100% when compared to the use of gasoline, provided that surplus electricity generated in the production process is sent to distribution grids.
All of Brazil's nearly 400 sugar and ethanol mills are self-sufficient in electricity, and a growing number of mills are generating a surplus by using cane straw and bagasse, which is what's left of the sugarcane after it has been processed into ethanol and sugar.
More than 100 countries around the world already grow sugarcane, and UNICA advocates that many of them can benefit from the same cane-based energy technology developed in Brazil.
During Green Week, Kutas will participate in the panel "Climate Change: What can be asked of emerging economies?" sponsored by UNICA and organized by the Friends of Europe group, one of the main independent think tanks in Brussels. The panel is part of the simultaneous event "European Policy Summit - Climate Change: keys to a concerted policy shift," which will include presentations from the director-general of the European Commission for Environment and Climate Change Strategy Job Delbeke; the president of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and founder of Development Alternatives -- a Delhi-based non-governmental organization, Ashok Khosla; and the senior manager of the Center for Carbon Capture and Storage of the South African National Energy Research Institute, Tony Surridge.
The event, organized by the DG Environment of the European Commission and themed "Climate Change: act and adapt," expects to bring 3500 participants from EU institutions, corporations, non-governmental organizations, public officials and members of the scientific community and academia. For more information, visit the website: http://greenweek2009.alligence.com/
UNICA's presence at the event falls within the scope of the Apex-Brasil/UNICA project, launched in January of 2008. This partnership with the Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil) of Brazil's Federal Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade, is designed to globally promote Brazilian sugarcane-based ethanol as a clean and renewable energy.
UNICA represents the top producers of sugar and ethanol in Brazil's South-Central region, especially the state of São Paulo, which accounts for about 50% of the country's sugarcane harvest and 60% of total ethanol production. UNICA develops position papers, statistics and specific research in support of Brazil's sugar, ethanol and bioelectricity sectors.
In 2008, Brazil produced an estimated 565 million metric tons of sugarcane, which yielded 31.3 million tons of sugar and 25.7 billion liters (6.8 billion gallons) of ethanol, making it the number one sugarcane grower and sugar producer in the world, and the second-largest ethanol producer on the planet behind the United States, which produces ethanol from corn.
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
how many thousands of workers work for free or near free to make your sucess storie !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
International Energy Agency has recently confirmed that sugarcane ethanol can deliver a verifiable reduction in GHG emissions that can exceed 100% when compared to the use of gasoline, provided that surplus electricity generated in the production process is sent to distribution grids.
I BET NONE OF THIES WELL INFORMED PEOPLE HAVE EVER BEEN NEAR A FIELD WHEN IT IS SET ON FIRE TO BURN FOR DAYS
what does that put into the air and peoples lungs , not to think about the poison and fertilizes that runs off into the water shead
where the workers wives wash there clothes and bathe.