BioEthanol for Sustainable Transport - BEST Project 2008-36-0216

This paper will present the BEST project - BioEthanol for Sustainable Transport, developed by CENBIO-Brazilian Reference Center on Biomass. It's an European Union initiative, coordinated by the Stockholm City Hall, that aims to promote the ethanol usage, replacing diesel, in the urban public transport. Apart from São Paulo, leading city in the Americas, another eight cities located in Europe and Asia take part in the project. One of the Brazilian project's goals is to evaluate ethanol usage as diesel fuel replacement in public transport buses by comparatively following the operational output of the experimental fleet (fuel consumption, performance and occurred failures), taking as reference an equivalent diesel bus. The utilized test vehicles will be evaluated and monitored to demonstrate ethanol energetic efficiency and, after the results, the BEST project and the European Union will set a blue print for public policies to incentive ethanol usage in the urban public transport. The time is very favorable to the Brazilian program, as it is an alternative to diminish the metropolitan region pollution where the technology will be demonstrated. The vehicle will reduce in up to 80% gases emissions responsible for global warming. The engine utilized in the tests is well advanced even for European pollution standards. It is expected that this competitive advantage and the BEST project development in São Paulo will attract the attention of other places in Brazil for this technology.