The large-scale production of ethanol as a fuel started in Brazil in 1975, followed by the USA in 1978. The amount of ethanol produced in the world in 2001 was 22,540 billion l (Fig. 6.1); global production was dominated by Brazil and the USA. Brazilian production is based on the fermentation of sugar from sugarcane, whereas the USA used starch extracted from maize. By 2006, global production had increased to 51 billion l (13.5 billion gallons), which represents 4.6% of global petrol consumption. Bioethanol has the potential to replace 353 billion l of petrol, which is 32% of the global petrol consumption (1103 billion l) when used as 85% addition (E85) (Balat et al., 2008). In 2006, the USA produced 4.85 billion gallons (18.3 x 109 l) of bioethanol which has overtaken the production by Brazil of 4.49 billion gallons (16.97 x 109 l) (Fig. 6.2).

The plants installed in Brazil are small, in the region of 100,000 l in capacity, compared with the large units installed in the USA at around 0.8 billion l per year.

Fig. 6.1. Distribution of production of ethanol worldwide in 2001, from a total of 22,540 billion l. (From Licht, 2006.)

Fig. 6.2. Distribution of ethanol production worldwide in 2006, from a total of 51,000 billion l. (From Balat et al., 2007.)

Table 6.5 lists some of the largest ethanol producers in the USA, with the largest vol­ume produced at 4.1 billion l (1.08 billion gallons). This difference is in part due to the USA plants being attached to very large maize-processing plants, whereas in Brazil locally grown sugarcane is processed in smaller units avoiding extensive transport.