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Cuba
to modernize its ethanol production
Yahoo!
News. By Andrea Rodriguez, Associated
Press Writer Tue May 22, 2007.
HAVANA - Cuba is modernizing its ethanol-producing
facilities despite Fidel Castro's repeated
assertions that making more of the biofuel
could starve the world's poor.
The island plans to upgrade 11 of its 17
refineries, which produce up to 47 million
gallons annually of ethanol from sugar cane,
said Conrado Moreno, a member of Cuba's
Academy of Sciences.
The refineries currently produce alcohol
for use in rum and other spirits, as well
as medications and cooking on the island.
But the improvements will give Havana the
capacity to one day produce fuel for cars,
Moreno told reporters at a conference on
renewable energy.
Ethanol produced in Cuba is not for cars
now, but "in four or five years, we'll
see," he said.
Castro has railed against a U.S.-backed
plan to produce ethanol from corn for cars
in a series of editorials published in state-run
newspapers, claiming it will cause prices
of farm products of all kinds to spike and
make food too expensive for poor families
around the globe.
Castro has not been seen in public since
undergoing emergency intestinal surgery
and stepping aside in favor of a government
run by his 75-year-old brother Raul, the
defense minister. Officials insist his health
is improving.
Brazil is the world's leading producer
of ethanol from sugar cane. In March, it
signed an agreement with the United States
to promote ethanol production in Latin America
and create international quality standards
to allow it to be traded as a commodity
like oil.
That agreement helped spark the editorials
from Castro, which have been read repeatedly
on state television and radio. In them,
Castro distinguishes between the cane ethanol
Cuba produces and the corn-based biofuel
common in the U.S. but criticizes both forms.
Moreno conceded Tuesday that ethanol produced
from sugar cane could bring economic opportunity
to some "isolated communities"
in Cuba.
The 80-year-old revolutionary released
another signed opinion to foreign journalists
Tuesday night, saying the damaging effects
of producing ethanol were not new.
"The dangers to the environment and
the human species are topics on which I
have been mediating for years," Castro
wrote. "What I never imagined was the
immense risk."
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