by Senator Richard G. Lugar and José Miguel Insulza

Brazil´s experience of using sugar cane to produce ethanol as a fuel has attracted great interest as an alternative to fossil-based fuels which will run out one day and are often located in areas of great geopolitical tension. The US is also a large producer of ethanol which it makes from corn. President George W. Bush´s visit to Brazil in March focused on this area and he and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pledged to work together. One man at the center of this issue is Senator Richard G. Lugar from Indiana who is Republican leader on the Foreign Relations Committee and a former chairman of the Agriculture Committee. In an article, written jointly with  José Miguel Insulza, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Senator Lugar  says that by cooperating, Brazil and the United States have “an unprecedented opportunity to join in a strategic hemispheric partnership that would at once tackle two of the hemisphere's biggest challenges: energy insecurity and poverty.” Brazil Political Comment presents an excerpt from the article.

Our hemisphere has major oil exporters, such as Canada, Mexico and Venezuela; and oil importers, such as the United States, Chile, Uruguay and nearly all the smaller countries in Central America and the Caribbean.

Then there's Brazil. Despite its large population and strong economic growth, Brazil has transformed itself from a significant oil importer (imports were 46 percent of consumption just 10 years ago) to a country that is self-sufficient in petroleum. The Brazilians did this in part by promoting energy conservation and by working hard to find new domestic sources of oil.

But they also bet big on ethanol made from sugar. Defying widespread skepticism, Brazilians set out nearly 30 years ago to use home-grown sugar cane as a source of energy independence. Although the task suffered setbacks, today Brazil has replaced about 40 percent of its gasoline consumption with ethanol. It even exports ethanol to the United States, despite a high tariff.

Brazil has used a combination of mandated content requirements, tax incentives, government-sponsored lending and research, as well as innovative programs such as ''biofuel clusters'' (large-scale agribusiness focused exclusively on the production of biofuels energy in currently marginal growing areas) to help create the economies of scale required for an efficient industry.

To get ethanol to consumers, Brazil built a network of pipelines to transport ethanol from production facilities to domestic gasoline retailers. And more than 70 percent of the new vehicles sold there are flexible-fuel models, which can burn a mixture of up to 85 percent ethanol and gasoline.

Brazil's experience holds important lessons for other oil-importing countries. We know the perils of over-reliance on energy imports. Prices can soar, and supplies can even stop, wreaking havoc with government budgets, snuffing out economic growth and raising the potential for domestic unrest and political manipulation by oil suppliers.

This is especially true for some of the poorest countries in the region, like Haiti, Nicaragua and Guyana. The challenges these developing nations face are exacerbated by high oil-import bills.

Not everyone can grow sugar cane as efficiently as Brazil. But with new cellulosic technology nearing commercial take-off, virtually any kind of biomass -- wood chips, straw, agricultural waste, even cow manure -- may be used to make biofuels. Experience in the United States, which makes ethanol from corn and recently passed Brazil as the world's top producer, shows that biofuel production can provide higher incomes and more jobs to struggling rural communities.