Ethanol Cars for Carbon Credits

August 18, 2002 – Vol.7 No.21

ETHANOL CARS FOR CARBON CREDITS.

If anything, meetings, conventions, summits and the like give people the chance to meet face to face, breathe the same air and shake hands in greeting and to finalize business deals.

While meeting at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa representatives of Brazil would like to finalize an agreement with representatives of Germany in which Germany would subsidize the production of 100,000 or more cars to be built in Brazil to run exclusively on alcohol derived from sugar cane. In return Germany would get carbon credits which it can use to lower its quota of greenhouse gas emissions agreed to under the Kyoto Protocol.

Brazil has about 3 million alcohol fueled cars on the road, but the effort has lagged in recent years because of a lack of government subsidies.