Gasoline is now the “alternative fuel” in Brazil.
“In the beginning of February of this year, ethanol consumption surpassed that of gasoline,” Joel Velasco of the Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association said during an update on Brazil’s ethanol industry at the 2008 Fuel Ethanol Workshop in Nashville Tuesday. “My friends, that is a big victory. The oil company now is in a corner.”
Velasco says they have achieved that milestone by consumer choice. “Ninety percent of all the new vehicles today are flex fuel in Brazil, in fact, we are now up to 25 percent of our fleet is flex fuel.”
Because the price of ethanol is substantially lower than gasoline, Velasco says Brazilian consumers are choosing to put 100 percent ethanol in their tanks and “saying forget about gasoline.”
Listen to Velasco’s address to the 2008 FEW here:
[audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/few08/few08-velasco.mp3]