Sudan will soon open the country’s first biofuel plant. The new project will initially produce about 65 million litres of biofuel a year and it is expected to reach 200 million litres in two years. The government will be using products from the local sugar mill as its feedstock to create a renewable energy.
State company, Kenana, which already makes sugar and molasses will run the project located about 250 km south of Khartoum.
Brazil is the second largest producer of ethanol after the United States, but it is the biggest exporter of biofuels.
The ethanol plant is a joint effort between the Sudanese Ministry of Energy and two companies, Kenana and Giad. Brazil’s Dedini Industrias de Base constructed the plant at a cost of $15 million.
Sudan aims to become one of the largest ethanol producers. One of the priorities of the Sudanese authorities is to increase sugar production in order to reach an annual 10 million tonnes by 2015, up from some 850,000 tonnes at present.
The increased sugar production could support both increased sugar exports and approximately 18 new ethanol plants and would also put Sudan in the top-five of world producers alongside Brazil, India and the EU.
Ethanol has become an increasingly attractive alternative for oil after the rise of crude prices, but production of the fuel was seen as a major contributor to global food prices.
Despite the subsidies, ethanol remains an expensive fuel, taking into account all of the energy from fossil fuels that’s needed to run farm machinery, fertilize and harvest also it takes almost as much energy to produce ethanol as it provides.
Af Merieme Addou, AfricaNews reporter in Rabat, Morocco
