How far has your country gone to support the green car movement? Our bet is that it has some way to go to catch Brazil – which celebrated building its 10millionth flex-fuel vehicle earlier this month.
According to the country’s National Association of Vehicle Manufacturers, the marker was hit on March 4 with the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) commenting that it should encourage car manufacturers to invest further – it represents the top producers of sugar and ethanol in the region, including the state of Sao Paulo which accounts for about 50 per cent of the sugarcane harvest and 60 per cent of total ethanol production.
UNICA outlines that flex-fuel technology is not widely offered in other parts of the world as there is a lack of commitment to produce and use ethanol. Marcos Jank, the president of UNICA, stated that the next step is to “take this technically proven and highly successful project to the rest of the world”. He believes there are currently barriers to its use, specifically tariffs, and because of these protectionist barriers, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol has struggled to enter global markets competitively despite its ability to reduce emissions.
Jank outlines that pushing the industry into the mainstream will not be a quick process and that the introduction of flex-fuel vehicles around the world will need decisive support from car manufacturers. Without it, he says, Brazil would not have been able to achieve such positive results. He hopes that now the “Brazilian success story” will be used as a model for the rest of the world and that more flex-fuel vehicles being introduced into more markets will encourage the production and availability of ethanol.
According to official statistics, Brazil produced around 565million metric tons of sugarcane in 2008 that yielded 31.3million tons of sugar and 25.7billion litres of ethanol making it the second largest ethanol producer in the world behind the US.
