Additives such as biofuels will help gasoline meet the 10% reduction target, since many — sugarcane ethanol included — offer a much lower carbon intensity than gasoline.

“The verifiable 90% greenhouse gas reduction delivered by sugarcane ethanol provides a source of low carbon fuel that achieves the goals of California’s ambitious regulation, with room to spare,” said Marcos Jank, UNICA’s president and CEO following the vote in Sacramento.??The LCFS is designed to reduce by 10% the carbon intensity of all transportation fuels used in California by 2020. As part of broader climate change regulations, CARB is calculating the carbon intensity of all fuels offered in the state. It has determined that the carbon intensity of gasoline is about 95 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule (gCO2/MJ), meaning that gasoline must reduce its carbon intensity to 86 gCO2/MJ by 2020 to meet the LCFS.??Additives such as biofuels will help gasoline meet the 10% reduction target, since many offer a much lower carbon intensity than gasoline. While preliminary CARB calculations indicate that sugarcane ethanol has a direct carbon intensity of 27 gCO2/MJ, comments submitted by UNICA to the Air Resources Board on April 17 point out that the 10-member Board failed to account for basic elements of sugarcane production and ethanol processing that directly affect that result. These include expanding mechanization of the cane harvest, increasing cogeneration and significant, ongoing reduction of pre-harvest field burnings.??”We congratulate California for leading the world in encouraging low carbon fuels. But any realistic evaluation of carbon emissions from sugarcane farming in Brazil must reflect the strict policies being implemented and action already taken to phase out sugarcane burning, increase mechanical harvesting and expand cogeneration output,” said Joel Velasco, UNICA Chief Representative in North America, who was present at the Board meeting in Sacramento.

Making today’s announcement, Stratos’ CEO, Tom Snyder, stated, “This is another very important step for Stratos Renewables in our evolution. Leonard is a very accomplished finance executive and brings to us valuable experience and contacts that will help Stratos as we evolve into a rapidly growing agro-energy business.”

“Joining Stratos’ Board of Directors, which has such a wide and deep array of talent and expertise, is a terrific opportunity,” stated Mr. Brooks. “The Company’s goal of producing low carbon sugarcane ethanol at one of the lowest costs in the world is very exciting. I’m looking forward to assisting Stratos with completing its near term objectives to increase land holdings from 24,000 hectares to over 50,000 hectares by year end and to build out over 100 million gallons of production capacity to be supplied primarily by its own land. This team is one of the strongest groups I’ve had the pleasure to work with in the renewable energy industry and I’m excited to lend my expertise to our combined efforts.”

Biographies

Leonard Brooks is a senior investment banking professional with over 20 years of investment banking experience. Mr. Brooks founded and ran a number of investment banking initiatives at prominent firms including most recently the Private Equity Finance Group at Goldman Sachs, and the Private Equity Placement Group at UBS. He holds an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and has been a member of the Fuqua School of Business Isle Maligne Society since 1985. Mr. Brooks holds a BBA from The College of William & Mary.

About Stratos Renewables Corporation

Stratos Renewables Corporation intends to be a vertically integrated sugarcane ethanol player in Peru, committed to becoming the lowest cost producer of ethanol globally. The company believes Peru’s ideal growing conditions in the bare coastal desert, which allow for among the highest yields of sugarcane in the world, combined with the economic growth and expansion, illustrated by recent exponential growth in foreign direct investment, and GDP growth over the last five years, adds to Peru’s promise as an attractive location for the development of sugarcane plantations and production of ethanol. Rating agency DBRS recently assigned investment-grade credit ratings to Peru’s long-term foreign and local currency debt and, according to recent reports from several top financial institutions, the Free Trade Agreement struck between the US and Peru is expected to attract additional investment and contribute to continued economic growth. For information about Stratos Renewables Corporation, please visit: www.stratosrenewables.com

About Ethanol

Recent studies have demonstrated that ethanol is a clean burning biofuel produced from renewable sources, and can be grown year after year. In its most basic sense, ethanol is a grain alcohol and can be produced from sources such as corn and sugar. Pure ethanol is normally not used as a replacement for gasoline, but the integration of percentages ranging from 2% to 85% ethanol into a gasoline supply has the potential to cut down on not only the amount of oil consumed, but also on the emissions generated by the burning of that fuel. Studies indicate that ethanol significantly reduces harmful exhaust emissions, which contribute to global warming. According to a recent United Nations report, biofuels will account for up to 25% of the world’s energy needs by 2025.

Making today’s announcement, Stratos’ CEO, Tom Snyder, stated, “This is another very important step for Stratos Renewables in our evolution. Leonard is a very accomplished finance executive and brings to us valuable experience and contacts that will help Stratos as we evolve into a rapidly growing agro-energy business.”

“Joining Stratos’ Board of Directors, which has such a wide and deep array of talent and expertise, is a terrific opportunity,” stated Mr. Brooks. “The Company’s goal of producing low carbon sugarcane ethanol at one of the lowest costs in the world is very exciting. I’m looking forward to assisting Stratos with completing its near term objectives to increase land holdings from 24,000 hectares to over 50,000 hectares by year end and to build out over 100 million gallons of production capacity to be supplied primarily by its own land. This team is one of the strongest groups I’ve had the pleasure to work with in the renewable energy industry and I’m excited to lend my expertise to our combined efforts.”

Leonard Brooks is a senior investment banking professional with over 20 years of investment banking experience. Mr. Brooks founded and ran a number of investment banking initiatives at prominent firms including most recently the Private Equity Finance Group at Goldman Sachs, and the Private Equity Placement Group at UBS. He holds an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and has been a member of the Fuqua School of Business Isle Maligne Society since 1985. Mr. Brooks holds a BBA from The College of William & Mary.

Brazil’s national oil company is sitting on an energy bonanza…

But while Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) has gotten tons of press for its deepwater offshore discoveries in the past two years, 80 billion barrels of undersea hydrocarbon potential doesn’t impress the Green Chip Stocks team.

Instead, this spring’s 87% investment increase in Petrobras’s sugar ethanol operations has us rapt.

Petroleo Brasileiro, as the company is officially named, has played a key role in the country’s Pro-Alcohol biofuel promotion program ever since the oil-shocked 70s. With skyrocketing prices and total reliance on foreign supply, the military government decided to develop domestic fuel alternatives.

A generation of dithering in “developed” countries has made Brazil, now a thriving democracy with the world’s 10th largest national economy, the envy of economic pacesetters like the U.S. and Japan.

Brazilian government officials and Petrobras execs now have the ears of Department of Energy officials in deciding what it takes to integrate biofuel throughout the energy economy.

And Petrobras is putting its money where its mouth is with a new business plan, spending 2.4 billion dollars to advance production both at home and abroad.

In fact, out of 3.6 billion liters of its output goal for 2013, 1.9 billion will go to foreign markets. That’s more than half of the target.

To achieve that by 2013, Petrobras will either build, enhance, or buy 7 ethanol and biodiesel plants.

The company will spend over half a billion bucks—$530 million—on research and development, showing they’re not content to sit on generations-old fuel technology.

Frankly, if they did, we wouldn’t lend them any more credence than we did fly-by-night U.S. corn ethanol companies. We stayed away, and they eventually got unwound by the market.

In this case, Brazilian ethanol not only looks promising to its proud parent Petrobras, but also to foreign partners like Portugal’s Galp Energia.

Petrobras Recognizes the Peak Oil Reality

Galp is also a collaborator in the Tupi deepwater operation mentioned above, and even though fresh reports in early March say Tupi’s oil can be produced profitably at $40 oil, Galp is going for ethanol.

Maybe that’s because Galp and Petrobras’s other partner in Tupi, Britain’s BG Group, know Tupi may peak as soon as 2015…

That’s just two years after Tupi’s petroleum production is first expected to hit high gear!

As Petrobras straddles the energy peak with one foot in fossil fuel and the other in ethanol, it’s not a pure play on clean energy.

However, Petrobras has all the marks of a comprehensive worldwide power player.

Among the foreign markets Petrobras is targeting for over half its 2013 output, the new business plan has Petrobras prioritizing Latin America and Africa. With ties to Galp in Portugal and other former Portuguese colonies like Angola and Mozambique, Petrobras can do a lot of good in developing Africa’s clean energy economy.

In richer Japan, Petrobras is engaged in a joint project called Brazil Japan Ethanol (incidentally, there are over 1.4 million Brazilians of Japanese descent).

Japan, with 3 times the GDP of Brazil, is taking baby steps when it comes to ethanol. They’re trying to incorporate E3, a 3% ethanol blend, into their gasoline.

Petrobras, meanwhile, is emphasizing “second generation” feedstock, i.e. utilizing waste from the initial sugar-to-ethanol refining process.

Brazil and Petrobras have stayed a step ahead, and we don’t expect them to give up that position any time soon.

Original Source

12/1/2008 – Stratos Renewables Corp. took another step towards its goal to be a significant producer of sugar cane ethanol in Peru by securing a stretch of land in the northern coastal region of the Andean country for planting enough raw material to produce up to 90 million gallons annually.


Because of an agrarian reform in the country during the 1970s, acquiring large swathes of land and securing the water rights is one of the most difficult hurdles for investors in the budding Peru ethanol sector, said Sanjay Pai, chief strategy officer for Stratos, in an interview with Clean Technology Insight. 



“One of the main difficulties has been acquiring sufficient contiguous land,” said Pai, who joined the company in June and who is also an executive with Brazil’s Comanche Clean Energy Corp., which operates two sugar and ethanol mills in Sao Paulo state. 



Stratos declined to disclose the size of the acquired property, but said that historically high sugar cane yields of 160 metric tons per hectare in Peru mean that producing 90 million gallons/year takes a lot less land than in Brazil, where yields are approximately 90 tons/ha. 



Peru is attracting many investors for its biofuel industry thanks to its high cane yields, a government mandate to introduce ethanol as a gasoline additive at a 7.8% mix from 2010, and a free-trade agreement with the U.S., which allows it to export ethanol to the U.S. duty free. The U.S. currently imposes a tariff of 54 cents per gallon on sugarcane ethanol from Brazil, which makes it uneconomical to ship the alternative fuel from there. 


“The [ethanol] mandates in the U.S. are being expanded, and there hasn’t been any new plant construction in the last year-and-a-half, so I think that by the middle of next year there’ll be a demand increase in the U.S.,” he said. 



The U.S. has a mandate to mix 10% of ethanol into gasoline, and legislation that foresees the use of up to 36 billion gallons in 2022, from approximately 9 billion gallons this year.

The fact that producing corn-based ethanol isn’t as energy-efficient as making cane-based ethanol, as well as consumers’ concern over a food such as corn being diverted into fuel creates an opportunity for imports from Peru. 



Stratos has one small plant under renovation that will start production by the third quarter of 2009, said Pai. The plant will use purchased cane and produce about 9 million gallons of ethanol per year, mostly for the domestic market. 



Peru doesn’t currently produce any ethanol fuel, according to a recent study by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, but its cost of production is one of the lowest amongst the countries in the group, behind only Mexico. 



The small plant will also serve as a training lab for the larger facility to be built in the land Stratos just acquired. Stratos will be running its own cane plantation, which will use drip irrigation for both keeping the crop moist and fed with nutrients. The land is sand-like and the company is currently working with engineers on the irrigation system. 



The refinery will be built with equipment coming mostly from Brazil, with some parts from the U.S., said Pai. Production of about 45 million gallons is expected in early 2011, rising to 90 million over the next few years. Most of the output of this refinery is intended for export, primarily to the U.S. but also to Europe and the Far East. 



Logistics of exporting ethanol from Peru are much more attractive than those for Brazil, said Pai. Stratos’ property will be about 50 kilometers from the coast, where there’s a fuel terminal, he said. That compares with about 500 kilometers at least for most of Brazil’s production in the center-south region, its main producing area. 



Stratos, which lists its stock in the over-the-counter Bulletin Board market, is a development-stage company and raised $10 million in a private round of financing in November of 2007, when it changed its name from New Design Cabinets Inc. It also raised $11.6 million this year from investors, including hedge funds, private equity funds and environmental funds such as RNK Capital LLC.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set its 2009 Renewable Fuels Standard at 10.21%, equating to 11.1 billion gallons of ethanol.

The 2008 RFS was 7.76%, or an approximate 9 billion gallons.

The US Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 formed a target of 36 billion gallons of ethanol to be used annually in transportation fuels by 2022.

According to the Federal Trade Commission there are 160 companies involved in ethanol production in the US as of September, up 57 from last Q3 year. The largest producers account for about 11% of US ethanol production compared with 16% in 2007.