Brazil’s Bioethanol Initiative Essay

The Brazilian Rainforest is one of the most unique, vast, and diverse regions of the world. To get a general idea of the diversity of the Rainforest, it makes up a total of one-third of the world forests (more than four million square kilometers), it contains half of the total number of named species in the world (eighty-thousand plant species, 1,500 fish species, and one-forth of the 8,600 bird species), and is the world largest holder of genes (Library 138-139). To say the least, the Brazilian Rainforest is one of the most important natural resources we, as humans, know. It would seem that this knowledge, alone, would also make the Brazilian Rainforest one of the most protected land areas on Earth as well. However, the situation is

Venezuela’s reputation has been well established regarding its supply of oil and how it was being used for medicinal use and other purposes. It was not until the first oil well was drilled in 1912, when Venezuela became the world’s second largest oil producer behind the US, and the world’s largest oil exporter (Wilpert, 2003). With the well drill in the country it attracted many major oil producers that wanted a piece of anything they could get. The Royal Dutch Shell and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil became the main producers of the oil and maintained a high status. Everything was going great for the company, “ between 1920 and 1935 oil share’s exports went up from 1.9% to 91.2%”(Wilpert, 2003), but not everything goes according to plan. The country had a dramatic impact towards its economy that many recall, “The Dutch Disease.” “The utmost important magnitude of the Dutch Disease was that agricultural production declined to almost nothing and the country fell behind in industrializing, relative to other Latin American countries” (Wilpert, 2003). Thus, Venezuela had passed a reform oil policy that was the Hydrocarbons Act, which was from the oil revenues based on the income of the mines (Wilpert, 2003), bringing the state’s income to stability.

Venezuela was once Latin America’s richest country because of its production of oil. Internationally, Venezuela was positioned ahead of Saudi Arabia as a country who had the largest oil reserves because the Orinoco belt contained an estimated 1.2 trillion barrels of oil. After the oil prices climbed to $100/bbl. in 2007, former President Hugo Chavez took this as an opportunity to seek more revenue which the government was using to fund the welfare programs it offers its citizens such as food, housing and services for the elderly that are also beneficial to refugees. However, when oil prices plummeted to barely $50/bbl., Venezuela’s oil production fell to 2.6 million BPD, which is a more than 20% decrease than average. This economic crisis lead

In recent years one of the greatest dangers the world overall countenances is the damage of our surroundings. The demolition of the Brazilian rainforest is presumably the most imperative issue that is to be contemplated on the grounds that it is the reason for other major environmental issues we are confronting, for example, an unnatural weather change, the exhaustion of our ozone layer, and perceptible atmosphere changes all over the world. Brazil's deforestation issue has transformed into earth's deforestation issue.

Brazil ranks first in the world in arable land and fifth in the world in territory and population. They have a “soils sustain a bountiful agricultural which they produce the world’s leading exporter of coffee, orange juice, sugar, tobacco, ethanol, beef, and chicken.”(pg.273) Deforestation became a major issue in Brazil. Due to the fact of “removing the rainforest results directly from logging operations, but more of it is now a matter of clearing space for land occupation by settlers as well as the expansion of large-scale agribusiness.” (pg.278) Brazil economy have grown over the years after the new policies that was passed made a sufficient in the manufacturing in Brazil.

Brazil, South Americas most influential country has seen major growth in terms of the economy over the last decade. The main commodity from this region is oil and they are currently one of the world’s largest and major energy exporters. Recently finds in the Atlantic Campos Basin have had a staggering impact on the amount of crude exports and have seen a huge rise in their market.

such as raw sugar. By-products of the raw sugar production are molasses and rum. Due

The reducing oil prices in the past months & over production by OPEC nations, new oil field breakthrough done by other nations has kept the price of the crude oil to its lowest since the GFC. World is heavily dependent on oil and gas to meet its energy and other demands, which is met by few oil & gas producing countries who has this natural resource in abundance and brazil is one of them, it hold 15.6 billion barrels proven oil reserves as per oil regulatory authority, comes next to Venezuela in South America. Most of the reserves are offshore hidden deep beneath the ocean bed known as Presalt oil which makes 94% of the total Brazilian

In a very common way of thinking, the average person believes that in order for poor countries to develop, environmental concerns must be sacrificed before poverty is alleviated. As a representative of Brazil where poverty is a problem (21.4% of our population 200.4 million) and the large area of rainforest is a home to many species, we today need to understand that this is a problem for all nations. Sanitation, deforestation, and lack of shelter are all things that contribute to the need of natural resources. I think of it as: A person who is not impoverished will go to the store to buy the food they need. The store sources the food from the company and the company gets the food from, farms, nature etc. If you are impoverished you will go

The sugar beets and sugar cane are very good examples of these feed stocks that contain the sugar. Corn contains starch that can easily be converted into the sugar that is needed. Even most of the trees and grasses have cellulose that can be easily turned into sugar and then used in the making of ethanol (Mukherjee 1 para 2).The ethanol process always starts by grinding up the feedstock which makes it more quickly and easily processed.

Despite many different efforts to break Venezuela’s dependence on oil it is still extremely hard for the government to expand other sectors of their economy. Oil exports account for almost 95% of the countries export earnings (Torvik, 2006). When a country is this reliant on a single export it gives little incentive for investment into other sectors of the economy. For example, why would a business want to invest its money in to something like energy or diamond mining when nearly all of the money coming in is oil related? Put simply, they don’t and this is the problem that Venezuela has been trying to solve for years. “In 1997, the government announced an expansion of gold and diamond mining to reduce reliance on oil” (Pearson Education,

Brazil was colonized by the Portuguese in the 16th century when it began exporting gold and lumber. Exports later expanded to sugar, tobacco and coffee. After the rebellion in 1889, a republican government was established. In 1937 the dictatorial government instituted the import substituting industrialization (ISI) strategy to protect domestic producers by employing high tariffs. State-owned enterprises began expanding to oil, mining, and banks. Restrictive labor-market policies made it costly for firms to hire and fire workers so new businesses often operated outside the formal economy. Continued state-run industrialization and extensive spending on infrastructure ended in disaster in 1982 with

The oil-rich Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, located on the northern coast of South America, was for many decades considered among the wealthiest nations in the entire continent. While having the largest proven oil reserves in the world has often proved a tremendous boon for Venezuela, the very black gold that has been the cause of its success has also proven to repeatedly be its kryptonite. Over half of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product stems from petroleum exports – which equates to approximately 95% of total exports. It is really not too hard to imagine what drastic consequences shifts in global oil prices could have on the economy.

How is it that the country that possesses the world’s largest supply of oil will have to import oil? Venezuela is a study in contradictions. In 1922 oil was discovered in Venezuela and developed and exploited by United States oil companies. During the 1940’s the leftist government negotiated favorable terms for Venezuela, after which the economy grew continuously until it was the strongest in South America. In fact in 1950, Venezuela became the world 's fourth wealthiest nation per capita. In 1960 Venezuela was one of the founding members of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) OPEC was, created at the Baghdad Conference on September 10–14, 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. By 1973 Venezuela voted to simply nationalize the oil industry allowing it to create a massive refining and marketing system to export its oil. There was no doubt that a country rich in natural resources and largest oil reserves in Latin America and one of the largest reserves in the world, and a current population of over 30 million, that Venezuela has tremendous potential.

Dry-mill, the more common and standardized of the two processes, utilizes the four basic processes of ethanol production, “clean corn is ground and mixed with water to form a mash… enzymes are added to convert starch to sugar… yeast is added to ferment… then distilled and dehydrated to create fuel-grade 99-percent ethanol” (Shapouri 2). The Wet-mill process commonly referred to as a “biorefinery” process approaches ethanol from a more atomic level. In Wet-mill ethanol production “grain must be separated into is components including starch, fiber, gluten, and germ” (Shapouri 2). Nevertheless Wet-mill production still uses the three processes above to create ethanol, the difference between Wet and Dry-mill is the quality of their byproduct. Through Dry-milling you avoid the complexity of multiply biochemical disseminations, which save energy and money through lower skill labor and lower tooling costs. However Wet-mill production makes more efficient use of mass and higher quality byproducts that will have greater market value. In the end the net cost of either method is variable, yet on the average the cost to produce a gallon of ethanol is less for Dry-milling than for Wet, yet when you consider the sale of extra byproducts this figure is reversed (SEE Table 2).