Local ethanol could power cars this year

Leslie Ramsammy

The Agriculture Ministry and the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA) are in talks to use locally produced ethanol to woo investors and sharpen skills that would be put into developing the fledgling non-fossil fuel sector.

Guyana is set to start producing ethanol later this year. This development comes even as the Ansa McAl Group of Trinidad and Tobago, which signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with government in 2011 to conduct a feasibility study here, is continuing to assess its prospects.

“We are about to engage the GEA in discussions about blending [ethanol] with regular gas,” Agriculture Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy told Stabroek News last week. He also said that the ethanol plant which will be installed at the Albion Sugar Estate in Berbice will be commissioned by May and is expected to produce 1,000 litres per day. The facility is being built by the United Kingdom-based Whitefox Technologies, together with its Brazilian partner Green in accordance with a bio-ethanol contract with the Guyana Government.

The minister explained that fuel from the East Berbice facility could be used to power vehicles, to demonstrate its efficacy, and guide policy related to reducing dependence on fossil fuel. Guyana’s fuel import bill is US$350 million.

Leslie Ramsammy
Leslie Ramsammy

The plant will be utilising molasses from the current sugarcane production, though plans for planting sugar cane specifically for this purpose have not been ruled out. “We’ll be using molasses [one of the residues of sugar production from cane]. It will be utilising molasses from the regular sugar production and at this stage we’re not cultivating additional sugarcane lands specifically