Competitiveness of Brazilian sugarcane ethanol compared to US corn ethanol
By Christine Crago, Madhu Khanna, Jason Barton, E. Giuliani, W. Amaral. 2010
149 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Corn ethanol produced in the US and sugarcane ethanol produced in Brazil are the world's leading sources of biofuel. Current US biofuel policies create both incentives and constraints for the import of ethanol from Brazil and together with the cost competitiveness and greenhouse gas intensity of sugarcane ethanol compared to corn ethanol will determine the extent of these imports. This study analyzes the supply-side determinants of cost competitiveness and compares the greenhouse gas intensity of corn ethanol and sugarcane ethanol delivered to US ports. We find that while the cost of sugarcane ethanol production in Brazil is lower than that of corn ethanol in the US, the inclusion of transportation costs for the former and co-product credits for the latter changes their relative competitiveness. We also find that the relative cost of ethanol in the US and Brazil is highly sensitive to the prevailing exchange rate and prices of feedstocks. At an exchange rate of US$1=R$2.15 the cost of corn ethanol is 15% lower than the delivered cost of sugarcane ethanol at a US port. Sugarcane ethanol has lower GHG emissions than corn ethanol but a price of over $113 per ton of CO2 is needed to affect competitiveness.
Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/949c11d0f1e80f803d5b310497eca4590c101e98
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Citations in the corpus
- Outlook for ethanol production costs in Brazil up to 2030, for different biomass crops and industrial technologies (2015, background): “Corn cultivation cost in the USA are more dependent on land costs, while also fertilizers and machinery play a reasonable share [73].”