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CUBA:
Sugarcane - Source of Renewable Energy, But Not Ethanol
Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jun 1 (IPS) - Like other Latin American countries, Cuba is focusing on the development of renewable energy sources. But unlike Brazil, a leader in biofuels, this Caribbean island nation has ruled out the production of ethanol fuel based on sugarcane, because of President Fidel Castro's opposition to using food crops to produce biofuel on a large scale.

Cuban researchers continue to see the sugar industry, for decades the motor of the Cuban economy, as a strategic sector capable of producing food products for human and animal consumption, generating electricity from bagasse -- the fibrous by-product of sugar extraction from cane stalks -- or producing alcohol and even pharmaceutical products.