How Brazil is transforming sugar cane into ethanol that it claims is a cleaner, cheaper and more sustainable source of fuel.

Ometto and Cosan can thank the weather for its successful debut. Now that climate change is the worry du jour, the search for clean, renewable energy has sent scientists and companies to the far corners of the map. In France, beets are being turned into ethanol. In the United States, it's corn that's king. Sweet potatoes, compost and swtichgrass (a weed-like variety of grass found in prairies) are all being transformed into biofuels for the future.

But it's Brazil's sugar cane-derived ethanol that really has researchers, investors and the markets excited. "The world is searching for efficiency," says Sérgio Thompson Flores, head of Infinity Bioenergy, a U.K.-based renewable-energy company. "In terms of technology, genetic engineering, climate and soil, Brazil has a monumental comparative advantage in ethanol." That may explain why in addition to Cosan, some 350 Brazilian companies are currently brewing ethanol from sugar cane with the number of producers set to rise to 412 by 2012.

According to its advocates, sugar cane ethanol is the next best thing to hotwiring the sun. Relatively speaking, they say, it's also easy on the atmosphere, releasing a fraction of the carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases that add to the world's steamy greenhouse. Also, because plant waste can be used as fertilizer or as fuel to fire the distillery furnaces, making sugar ethanol requires only a fifth of the gasoline and diesel it typically takes to make fuel from crops like corn.

And Brazil's sweet brand of ethanol is efficient, brewed without the official price props or government handouts that are common in Europe and the United States. At least that's the pitch Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made on his tour in early August of Central America and the Caribbean, chatting up clients about sugar cane ethanol from Tegucigalpa to Kingston. Biofuels like "ethanol and biodiesel offer a genuine energy option for sustainable development," Lula said

And Brazil's sweet brand of ethanol is efficient, brewed without the official price props or government handouts that are common in Europe and the United States.

The standard U.S. import tariff on ethanol is otherwise a 2.5 percent duty, plus 54 cents per gallon.