Countries set 10% renewables target for 2010

The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have agreed to adopt long-term public policies to develop renewable energy sources for the region's energy matrix, participants at a regional renewable energy conference in Brasilia last week said in a statement. The goal is to have at least 10% of regional energy consumption produced from renewable energy sources. Participants promised to trade experiences, stimulate private investment in the area, provide training, establish financial mechanisms and carry out regular evaluations. Brazil's environmental minister, Marina Silva, said that the country already produces 41% of its energy from renewable sources, and that the 10% goal should be added on to current levels, AE-Setorial news service reported. Brazil's mining and energy ministry is sponsoring a program along theses lines to stimulate the production of bio-diesel from castor oil seeds, business daily Gazeta Mercantil reported. The ministry foresees the establishment of 10,000ha of production divided into 16 sub-areas, each one settled by 35,000 families. "It is project that is clearly social in character, but economically feasible," she said. The state government of Ceara, in northeast Brazil, has signed a partnership with local industries to cultivate 70,000ha of castor oil beans by 2007, enough to produce 28 million liters of bio-diesel. The bio-electricity program of federal-owned power holding Eletrobras in the Amazon region foresees the substitution of bio-diesel derived from castor oil and palm oil for diesel in the 91 isolated power plants of Amazon state utility Ceam. The Brasilia Platform Conference was a follow up to the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit. Delegates agreed to express strong support at the 2004 International Conference for Renewable Energies in Bonn "for the creation of a technical and financial cooperation fund to facilitate cooperation by industrialized countries with Latin America and the Caribbean in the field of technological development, in order to reduce existing costs and to increase investment in renewable energy sources in the countries of the region."