Ethanol is saving Brazilian drivers at the pump amid global surging gas prices
In Brazil, a car pulls up to a gas station. Everything looks the same … but something is different: This car is filling up on pure ethanol, grown from Brazilian sugarcane.
Ethanol, also known as ethyl alcohol, is a clear, flammable chemical compound. It burns cleanly. It can power engines. It’s cheap to make. And it doesn’t have to be shipped halfway around the world. Which means it’s way cheaper at the pump.
In São Paulo, drivers are filling their gas tanks with pure ethanol, made from Brazilian sugarcane that’s also helping keep gas prices down.Michael Fox/The World
In São Paulo today, ethanol is almost half the price of gasoline — $2.65 per gallon versus $4.54 per gallon.
That’s making a difference for many Brazilians.
“It’s much cheaper,” said Iara Amora, a taxi driver, who says she mostly fuels up on ethanol. “It’s easier on the pocketbook than gasoline.”
Iara Amora, a taxi driver in Sao Paolo, said she fuels up on ethanol most days because it’s more affordable.Michael Fox/The World
Brazil began to develop its ethanol industry in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. As gas prices spiked worldwide, Brazil began looking for a homegrown alternative. Officials decided the country’s sugar industry could grow enough cane to fuel ethanol production.
Roughly 80% of Brazil’s automobiles on the road have been built — mainly in local factories — to run on either ethanol or gasoline, or both. Gas attendants at multiple stations say that right now, most drivers are fueling up on ethanol.
Local entrepreneur Flavio Pacheco finds filling up with ethanol cheaper and better for the environment.Michael Fox/The World
“In addition to being cheaper, it pollutes less. It smells nicer, and the car goes faster,” said Flavio Pacheco, a local entrepreneur, driving a small, boxy white Fiat with a ladder strapped to the roof.
It really does smell nicer. Out of the tailpipe, a car running on ethanol releases 90% fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline.
Ethanol-mixed gas smells nicer on the roadways and overall generates less pollution.Michael Fox/The World
That’s because most of Brazil’s ethanol is grown in the Brazilian countryside and produced from sugar cane or corn.
And it has become big business. Over the next year, Brazil is expected to produce more than 11 billion gallons of ethanol, up 16% from last year. With exports also on the rise.
Across the country, 360 ethanol refineries operate. The ethanol industry today provides hundreds of thousands of jobs and accounts for roughly 2% of GDP.
But there is a problem. It takes a lot of land to grow the plants used to make ethanol. Currently, land for ethanol production in Brazil occupies about 35,000 square miles. That’s roughly the size of Maine … or the US states of Hawaii, Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut combined, according to calculations made by The World.
And this is highly industrialized agriculture.
A view of a São Paulo neighborhood from the highway.Michael Fox/The World
“When large areas of land are destined for monocropping, what aren’t we producing?” said Débora Nunes, a leader in Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, or MST.
Nunes says the problem isn’t the production of sugarcane, or even ethanol, the issue is that small farms that used to grow actual food are being subsumed.
“We also need to think about producing rice, beans, pineapple, corn, fruits, vegetables, and many other foods that reach people’s tables,” Nunes said. “What should be the priority of Brazilian agriculture? Is it to feed the people, or is it to produce more and more commodities and fuels for the market?”
But most Brazilian politicians, across the political spectrum, support the country’s ethanol boom. This includes President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party.
“Brazil is the country of ethanol,” he said a few years ago in an online interview. “We don’t need to be subordinated to the price of gasoline, because we have ethanol.”
Ethanol in Brazil isn’t just sold pure at the pump. As in the United States, it’s also mixed into gasoline.
A car fills up with ethanol-mixed gasoline at a gas station in São Paulo.Michael Fox/The World
On Aug. 1, Lula’s government increased the mandated ethanol content in Brazilian gasoline to 32%. Most gas in the United States has only 10% ethanol.
There has been some pushback to the government’s mandate.
“This growing increase in ethanol in gasoline may harm some vehicles,” said Marcelo Alves, a mechanical engineer at São Paulo University. “Imported cars, cars that were made to run only with gasoline, and especially motorcycles.”
That’s because in cars not built for it, high ethanol content may cause a number of issues, including corroding rubber and plastic and damaging motors.
Gas pump in São Paulo.Michael Fox/The World
Igor Fuser, a foreign relations professor at ABC Federal University in São Paulo and the co-author of a new book about the energy transition, says other countries could learn from Brazil’s experience.
“Brazil has all the conditions to be a leader in this process, in the sense of providing technology and equipment to other countries that can learn from the Brazilian experience and also benefit from biofuels, contributing to global entrepreneurship and the energy transition,” he said.
And also — as in Brazil — saving their citizens at the pump.