Brazil

Brazil is the world’s largest sugarcane producer and second largest ethanol manufacturer. With more than 30 years Brazil has by far the longest experience in developing an infrastructure and capacity to produce biobased energy based on sugar cane. This provides major opportunities and lessons for BE-Basic partners. Interestingly Brazil also has strong federal and regional investments in fundamental and applied research in the bioenergy field.

The foundations for the collaboration with Brazil originate from the nineties with both academic and industrial partners from the B-Basic consortium, the predecessor of BE-Basic. This intensified over the last few years when a number of missions and joint workshops with Brazilian researchers were organised. Collaborations with Brazil build on an integrated business plan of activities, which are formalised in a series of joint agreement:

• FAPESP – São Paulo Research Foundation and its BIOEN Research Programme (2010)
• CTBE – Brazilian Bioethanol Science and Technology Laboratory (2011)
• Unicamp – University of Campinas (2012)
• FIESP – Federation of Industries of São Paulo State (2012).

In 2012, BE-Basic and TU Delft opened a joint Brazil office to further intensify and facilitate the cooperation with Brazil, in the fields of research, education and business development. The office is located in Campinas, in Brazil.

For more information, contact Patricia Osseweijer, BE-Basic Coordinator Brazil and BE-Basic Flagship manager Sustainability