StockGuru Blog: Zap’s Brazilian Alliance Ahead of Its Time; Bush Strikes Ethanol Alliance with Brazil

Zap’s Obvio is manufactured in Brazil and Zap owns a portion of the manufacturing facility in Brazil as well. Why, Brazil?

Brazil has been light years ahead of the United States in ethanol production and use. President Bush recognizes Brazil’s superior position in terms of ethanol production and his Latin American tour last week included Brazil’s sugar cane fields which stretch for hundreds of miles and provide the ethanol that fuels eight out of every ten new Brazilian cars.

In only a few years, Brazil has become the planet’s undisputed renewable energy leader, and the highlight of Bush’s visit is expected to be a new ethanol “alliance” he will forge with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The two leaders signed an accord Friday to develop standards to help turn ethanol into an internationally traded commodity, and to promote sugar cane-based ethanol production in Central America and the Caribbean to meet rising international demand.

This represents an attempt to create a new two-nation “OPEC of Ethanol,” despite efforts by Brazilian and American officials to downplay the label amid concerns that whatever emerges would be viewed as a price-fixing cartel.

Bush and Silva are joining forces to promote the politically popular issue of renewable energy simply by gathering in a place where ethanol is king.

At every gas station Sao Paulo, a city of 18 million, drivers can fill up with gasoline or ethanol. Ethanol came courtesy of a 1970s decision by Brazil’s former military dictators to subsidize production and require distribution at the pumps.

A 1980s Brazilian fad with cars that ran only on ethanol petered out when oil prices fell in the early 1990s. But the fuel came back into vogue in 2003 when automakers started rolling out cars “flex-fuel” cars that run on gasoline, ethanol or any combination of the two.

With international oil prices reaching record highs, Brazilian drivers turned to the cars; most choose ethanol, because it costs about half the price of gas.

The ethanol industry is now making profits like never before amid heavy foreign investment. Just last week, Brazil’s state-run oil firm, Japan’s Mitsui & Co. and a Brazilian construction firm signed a memorandum of interest to study the construction of a pipeline in Brazil that would be used to help export ethanol to Japan.

Brazil is the world’s top exporter, though U.S. ethanol production still surpasses Brazil. But Brazil has an edge over the United States for future production because ethanol can be produced more cheaply with sugar cane than the corn used by U.S. farmers to make ethanol.

And increased use of corn for ethanol is prompting international corn price increases, prompting Silva to tell reporters last week he would tell Bush, “Why make ethanol out of corn? Why don’t we feed the corn to the chickens.”

Bush has set a goal of 35 billion gallons a year of ethanol and other alternative fuels, such as soybean-based biodiesel, by 2017 — a fivefold increase over current requirements. Bush envisions a major speedup of research into production of “cellulosic” ethanol made from wood chips, switchgrass and other feedstocks.

Bush and Silva have attempted to develop a framework to sharply boost ethanol production in the nations between Brazil and the United States, encouraging more foreign investment. Coming up with technical standards to define quality levels for ethanol is key to turn it into a commodity that could be traded like oil.

Once Again Zap Was the First to Recognize Brazil’s Initiative and Capitalize on It.

Link Here for Video on U.S. Ethanol Progress : Clean Renewable Fuel Goal to Become Mainstream. In his State of the Union speech to Congress last month, Bush said the country should increase its production of ethanol and alternatives fuels to 35 billion gallons by 2017.

The head of the federal Energy Information Administration, told reporters: “We don’t have the (Bush) goal in our outlook.” The EIA expects ethanol output to be only about 11.5 billion gallons in 2017, an alliance with Brazil and American ingenuity will hopefully create the technological breakthroughs necessary to meet Bush’s ethanol and alternative fuel goal of 35 billion gallons in a decade.

Link here to see Jeffry Sachs discuss the reality that worldwide pollution will only increase as economies expand: Jeffrey Sachs, author of The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, a New York Times bestseller. Link on the February 21, 2007, guest Jeffrey Sachs as he discusses how American views of pollution will evolve more rapidly as other countries begin to be identified as the pollution culprits!

And through all the public awareness and modern narrative ZAP will still be there with its original motto: Zero Air Pollution. As they bring more vehicles to the public their efforts will continue to be recognized.

Source: Zap Automotive and Associatred Press

For more information, visit http://www.zapworld.com .

Source: ZAP
Contact: ZAP
Alex Campbell, 707-525-8658 ext. 241
acampbell@zapworld.com

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