Obviously the quick answer is Brazil doesn’t depend on outside nations to meet it’s feul needs, but this got me to thinking, how does that translate to the outside world
I see a lot of websites saying Europe looks toward Brazil as a model but what if Brazil a pooer country than most European nations, doesn’t have many drivers (I don’t know how many they have)? If only 5% of your population has cars it’d be easy to be “energy independent” because so few of your people are impacted.
Any good websites that will give me more information about what Brazil and energy independence means?
Brazil is pretty large and fairly wealthy
You can find a report on the energy situation in Brazil from the IEA here, it is a couple of years old, but still relevant, the oil reserve numbers have gone up since then. http://www.iea.org/textbase/papers/2006/brazil.pdf
Just a couple of highlights which may help clarify Brazils position
Brazil’s GDP ranks ninth in the world, just ahead of Russia.
Brazil presently is the 10th greatest energy consuming country accounting for about 2.1% of the world’s annual total energy consumption and the fourth largest non-IEA energy consumer after China, India, and Russia (2003 data). Brazil’s proven oil reserves are estimated (as of January 2006) at about 13 billion barrels, second greatest in South America
On the international energy scene, Brazil has achieved a visible presence thanks to its unique energy profile. Having achieved self-sufficiency in crude oil in 2006, it is also a hub for regional energy integration, especially for the development of the gas market; it stands as the world leader in ethanol use and production, and the predominant role of hydropower in electricity generation results in very low emissions from its power sector.
Brazil is one of the BRIC economies, and, IMO, the sleeper among the bunch. BRIC stands for “Brazil, Russia, India, and China” and designates a group of economies likely to become dominant by the mid-21st century. Brazil is certainly not a poor third world country, and certainly DOES have a lot of drivers. As noted, a large factor in their “energy independence” is an early push to move to ethanol, which they derive from sugar cane. Unfortunately, this means depleting rain forests to grow sugar cane. Given this, it is perhaps ironic that the recent Tupi discoveries - very large offshore oil reserves - are in Brazil, to be developed by PBR (Petroleo Brasileiro or Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company).
Brazil has some very large companies, some of which are globally significant. Airliner manufacturer Embraer (NYSE:ERJ), for instance.