In May of 2007 the Brazilian magazine Exame published article signed by Sérgio Teixeira Jr. and Ricardo Cesar on biocombustible. It emphasized the enormous advantage of Brazil as leader in the
ethanol production. Quality of the soil, knowledge in genetic engineering, plants with the smallest costs, larger productivity and 30 year-old experience with the sugarcane alcohol guaranteed to the country the technological supremacy in the world of the biocombustibles. Even to that time, Brazil could feel to the luxury of not having competitors. Suddenly the planet woke up for the ethanol so much for the global heating as for the discharge of the price of the imported Middle East petroleum. The most serious threat of competition comes from the United States, through the laboratories of new technologies of the Silicon Valley. Important researches are addressed mainly for the cellulose ethanol, which can come from the grass, of the straw of the corn, of wood chips and of dozens of other sources. There are other technologies still more innovative, as an unlikely
gasoline done of sugar. Behind that everything is the money--a lot of money. Banks of Wall Street and petroliferous companies had already invested, until May of 2008, more than 200 million dollars and the American federal government promised to distribute 385 million dollars in the next four years to six specialized companies in plants of cellulose ethanol. British Petroleum announced a donation from 500 million dollars to the University of California, in Berkeley, to lead researches of cellulose transformation in fuel. The cellulosic ethanol is not new thing, because nine years before, the BC International Company set up a pilot plant to produce it of agricultural remains. The American government''s goal is to produce 132 billion liters of biocombustible in 2017 to reduce the country dependence of the petroleum and it is known that only with the corn it won''t reach her. It was considered, in 2007, a theoretical limit, without affecting the use of the grain in the feeding, a close production of 55 billion liters. All the techniques work at laboratory and to turn them commercial reality, the companies count with the venture capital bottoms. Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems and of Khosla Ventures it already invested in at least a dozen linked companies to the new biofuel. One of the most radical ideas in the search of the biocombustible of the new generation is of Amyris, company that was born with a donation of 42 million dollars of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation addressed for research with medicines antimalaria. In the middle of the development process, the founders discovered a bacterium that in contact with the sugar, it could create a vegetable fuel similar to the gasoline. It was born the "gasoline of sugar" there.
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