Brazil, the world's largest producer of sugar-based ethanol, urged fossil-fuel dependent Asian nations to use more biofuel as a counter to high oil prices on Monday.
Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues called on Southeast and East Asian countries to turn their abundant sugar and palm oil into components for blending with gasoline and diesel - advice some of them are already taking as their oil import bills rocket.
"In the 21st century, the most important fuel commodity in the world will be this agro-energy, this bio, renewable fuel," Rodrigues told a news briefing at a two-day regional conference on biofuel in Bangkok.
Ethanol is an alcohol-based fuel produced by fermenting and distilling starch crops converted into simple sugars. It can be produced from any biological feedstock such as sugar cane or maize. Despite surging crude oil prices, it remains more than 50 percent more expensive that hydrocarbon motor fuels.
Brazil produces around half the world's ethanol, mainly from sugar, at a rate of about 16 billion litres (3.52 billion gallons) a year and uses 14.5 billion litres at home. It expects exports of the product to quadruple to between 1.5 and 2.0 billion litres in the year to April 2005.
"This reduces the dependency of humankind on something that is going to finish some day," said Rodrigues, who led a delegation of Brazilian officials and sugar cane growers.
More than 60 percent of the world's ethanol is produced from sugar, mainly in Brazil, with most of the rest produced from maize in the United States.
At the conference, ministers and senior officials from Asia, Brazil and Germany pledged to promote co-operation on investment, production and research into biofuel raw materials "to sustain biofuel as a viable alternative fuel source and provide a stable source of income for the region's farmers".
Most of the participants at the conference were junior ministers or bureaucrats. Of the 10-member Association of South East Asian nations, only host Thailand and the Philippines sent an energy minister.
China, whose colossal oil consumption helped push oil prices to record highs earlier this month, sent a deputy director general of the energy bureau. Japan sent its senior vice minister for foreign affairs.
Thailand and the Philippines have both made recent moves to promote biofuel use.
Philippine Energy Secretary Vincent Perez proposed to the conference a regional standardisation of vehicle engines using bio-fuel.
His nation decided on Friday to study the merits of producing ethanol, and in July it decided to use a 1 percent blend of methyl ester made from coconuts in diesel for public transport.
Thailand also plans to dilute automobile gasoline with ethanol as high oil prices force it to reduce dependence on energy imports costing $10 billion a year. The government is replacing imported octane booster additive MTBE with a 10 percent mix of ethanol in gasoline, called Gasohol.
Industry Minister Pinuj Jarusombat said the government would meet Japanese auto-maker representatives to talk about the possibility to increase the mix of ethanol to 20 percent.
Mathias Berninger, Germany's vice minister for agriculture, called for a global harmonisation of bio-fuel produced from different products such as palm and rapeseed.
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