news
LATIN AMERICA
Tapping Brazilian “Bagasse” for Electricity Production
French company Albioma (née
Sechilienne-Sidec) wants to
invest 400 million euros (about
US $528 million) over the next
decade to tap into the confluence
of two established and emerging
sectors in Brazil: converting sug-arcane waste into electricity.
“Bagasse,” the crushed cane
stalks left over after sugar has
been extracted, has an energy
content of about 450 k Wh/met-
ric ton, which is similar to wood
and about half that of coal, but
it’s sparingly used as an ener-
gy source; only about 10 per-
cent of the 500 million metric
tons of bagasse produced glob-
ally gets converted into energy,
notes Reuters. One metric ton
of sugar cane yields about 300
kg of bagasse, and Brazil pro-
duces 560 million metric tons
of sugar cane annually. Brazil
could as much as double its bio-
mass electricity generation, to
10-15 percent of its overall ener-
gy mix, by better leveraging its
bagasse resources.
bagasse in overseas French territories from Mauritius and Guadalupe, including investing hundreds of millions of euros in a
bagasse project in Martinique,
and is now negotiating with sugar
mills in Brazil to buy out their
plants, Reuters says. Long-term
contacts with famers, sugar mills,
and the state grid take time to
negotiate, but financing is “
readily available” from the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES),
according to Albioma CEO Jacques
Petry, quoted by Reuters. ￮
Investors Pair Up for
Chilean Wind-Solar Projects
In May of this year Chile exceeded 1 GW of
installed capacity of renewable energy, and is on
track to possibly achieve 1. 3 GW by year’s end,
according to the Centro de Energías Renovables
(CER). More than half of that comes from biomass
and nearly a third from hydro. Chile has a growing
appetite for renewables, though, with roughly 10.5-
GW of projects approved or under assessment.
A new joint venture aims to tack even more
onto Chile’s renewable energy plate. Global
wind and solar developer Mainstream Renewable Power and global emerging market investor
Actis have formed a joint venture to develop 600
M W of wind and solar projects in Chile by early
2016, which would increase the country’s renewable energy capacity by 3. 6 percent. Actis will
