‘Shaped By Its Past’: Ethanol’s Trajectories in Brazil and the U.S.

by Susane Retka Schill (Ethanol Producer Magazine) Ethanol’s trajectories in Brazil and the U.S. have often been parallel and, even with many differences, often directly connected. Understanding that history offers important perspectives for current affairs, according to two ethanol historians.

It wasn’t surprising at all, for example, that Brazil organized the Belem 4X Pledge on Sustainable Fuels announced the Friday before Brazil COP30 opened in Belem on Nov. 10. Brazil’s President Lula da Silva was an enthusiastic ethanol supporter when he was president during the boom years of the 2000s that occurred in both countries.

The Belem 4X Pledge calls for quadrupling production of sustainable fuels—such as biofuels, hydrogen and synthetic fuels—by 2035. President Lula garnered cosponsorship with Italy and Japan, with initial endorsements from 16 countries including Canada, India, Mexico and the Netherlands, among others. The pledge calls for strengthening international collaboration to scale up sustainable fuels in an environmentally and socially responsible manner.

Brazil recently passed three major energy transition bills, one of which creates a carbon market to pay for decarbonization. “That’s built on a bill they passed just a few years before that gives specifically ethanol and other biofuel producers tradable securities in exchange for reducing carbon,” he (Tom Rogers, history professor at Emory University in Atlanta) says. “Brazil’s been [on] a real tear with planning the energy transition.”

... “Ethanol—A Hemispheric History for the Future of Biofuels,” recently published by University of Oklahoma Press ... covers the fuel debates in the first decades of the automobile, the fuel crises in the depression and wars, the 1970s energy crisis and the interplay of agriculture, agribusiness, environmental concerns and policy efforts ever since.

Brazil patterned its midcentury development on the U.S. model. U.S. policymakers in turn took note when Brazil responded to the 1970s oil shocks by distributing ethanol nationwide, replacing half its gasoline consumption. Then, in the 2000s, the U.S. and Brazil presidents worked together to dramatically expand ethanol production.

He (Jeff Manuel, history professor at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville) explains that Brazil, in the 1970s, was a military dictatorship with a state-owned oil company, Petrobras. “So when they embrace[d] alcohol fuels, [it was] a matter of … going to the state-owned company and saying, ‘You’re going to do this now.’ In the U.S., everything has to go through bills and horse-trading in Congress.”

In the U.S., the oil crisis on top of a deepening farm crisis in the 1970s spawned a small-scale, farm-based alcohol still movement. Then oil prices dropped radically in the 1980s, and the small-scale producers struggled, causing a swing toward agribusiness consolidation. ... These are very, very low-margin industries and in many cases, it’s only at massive scale that you can make a real go of it.

Can the Past Be Replicated?
Beyond the Belem 4X Pledge, Brazil is hoping to replicate the past in another initiative to extend its influence in the global south, starting with the African countries of Mozambique and Angola, Rogers says. “Lula presided over the big 2000s boom,” Rogers says. “He wants to get small-scale ethanol production begun in a distributed production process with Brazil backing it up.”

They cite continued concerns on both continents about issues around the environmental impact of monocrop agriculture and emerging electrification. “[T]he quickening pace of electric vehicle adoption has raised fundamental questions that have not been considered since the dawn of the automobile age. It is no longer clear that any liquid fuel will be needed to power cars and trucks after the next several decades. But the long-term historical view we have argued for suggests that the transition between internal combustion engines and electric vehicles could be protracted and complex. Ethanol is an old fuel. It once supplanted whale oil in lamps, and it survived the switch from illumination fuel to powering automobiles. For more than a century, it served as a ready alternative to gasoline. This persistence could continue.

“What might change is the fossil fuel–biofuel counterpoint that has defined so much of ethanol’s history. Biofuels will almost certainly have some role in a future energy system that relies far less—or not at all—on fossil fuels. Perhaps instead of serving as a perennial alternative to gasoline, it will serve as a bridge to electric vehicles. Beyond that realm, there will still be hard-to-electrify sectors like aviation and shipping, which appear to be likely markets for ethanol in the middle of the 21st century. Yet another new market for ethanol may appear in the form of using it as a feedstock for plastics currently made from petroleum. But no matter what new markets or uses emerge, ethanol’s future will inevitably be shaped by its past.” READ MORE

Excerpt from University of Oklahoma Press: Though ethanol, a liquid fuel made from agricultural byproducts, has generated controversy in recent years—good or bad for the environment? a big-ag boon or boondoggle?—its use goes back more than a century. Tracing the little-known history of this promising and contentious fuel, Ethanol: A Hemispheric History for the Future of Biofuels reveals the transnational nature of ethanol's development by its two biggest producers, the U.S. and Brazil. By drawing the connections between the shifting fortunes of ethanol in these two countries, the book presents the first full picture of the long history of this renewable fuel that from the beginning offered an imperfect alternative to oil.

Though generally presented as parallel stories, the histories of ethanol in the U.S. and Brazil are inextricably linked. Authors Jeffrey T. Manuel and Thomas D. Rogers show how policies in one country shaped those in the other. Brazil patterned its mid-century development on the U.S. model, adopting an automobile- and highway-focused transportation system and a fossil fuel-intensive agricultural sector. U.S. policymakers in turn took note when Brazil responded to the 1970s oil shocks by distributing ethanol nationwide, replacing half of its gasoline consumption. In the 2000s, the nations' leaders worked together to dramatically expand ethanol production. Today, as a new generation of biofuels meant to power aviation and fight climate change again connects Brazilian and U.S. ethanol, Manuel and Rogers explain how the fuel's future, like its history, is complicated by technical, scientific, economic, and social questions—about how to calculate carbon emissions, agricultural land use, national security and sovereignty, and the balance between government regulation and market forces. Understanding the future of biofuels demands a reckoning with this extensive, shared history—a reckoning that Manuel and Rogers's far-reaching, deeply researched book brings into view. READ MORE