Experts say ethanol boosting sugar

HAVANA - Wednesday, June 21, 2006 - The jamaica observer

While much ethanol in the United States and many other countries is produced from corn, about 70 per cent of ethanol produced worldwide is now made from cane, said Peter Baron, president of the London-based International Sugar Organisation.

"This will help to keep sugar prices up," Baron said of the growing use of cane for ethanol. "You know we had a few years of very low sugar prices - very, very low."
Ethanol can also be produced from sugar beets.

Worldwide, about 38.7 billion liters (10.22 billion gallons) of ethanol is expected to be produced this year from a variety of sources, compared with 33.6 billion liters (8.88 billion gallons) in 2005, Baron told about 200 representatives from a dozen countries on the first day of an international congress on sugar and its derivatives.

Baron said Brazil, a major sugar producer and leading producer of ethanol from cane, has become a model for developing nations looking for ways to get a better economic return from their sugar crop while producing a renewable fuel.

He said that even Cuba, which gets most of its petroleum on favourable terms from its political ally Venezuela, could benefit by producing ethanol for its own use.

Cuba, which has been restructuring its once crucial sugar industry since 2002, is upgrading 11 ethanol production plants, said Luis Galvez of the Cuban Research Institute for Sugar Cane Derivatives.