alt Hacker NewsBiofuels are basically green washing. While sugar-based is better than corn-based, Brazilian biofuel is mostly just turning EU subsidies into profit, by converting petrol into sugar-based biofuel to burn instead of burning the petrol directly. Very unfortunate.
You are right about it being strictly nonsense from a pure economics point of view. But in Brazil at least the economics of biofuel are not so far apart that they don't offset the advantages in more local industry and self-reliance against an increasingly unstable global oil market and geopolitical pressures (both of which are much harder to quantify).
However ethanol simply can't be used for heavy duty trucks and ships (which, you know, is 95% or more of goods transports in Brazil since there is almost no rail) which defeats much of the point.
At least the general population can shift to ethanol when supply market gets crazy which helps amortize the whole supply chain, but it still ends up affecting everyone just to a slightly lesser degree.
Buy yeah, corn or soy based ethanol is just insane to do at all. Sugar-based only makes sense in an increasingly unstable global order.