This work demonstrates that energy-rich vegetation, biomass, is a key renewable energy resource for the future. Most energy scenarios recognize bioenergy as an important component in the future world's energy outlook, both in developed and developing countries. Brazil, uniquely, has a recent history of large-scale biomass industrial uses that makes it a specially important test-bed both for the development of biomass technology and its utilization, and for understanding how this is shaped by political and socio-economic forces. Perhaps their most famous development was PROALCOOL, the national...