The Saudi Arabia of Biofuels

Summary

Drilled – "The Saudi Arabia of Biofuels" (June 9, 2026)

Podcast: Drilled
Host: Amy Westervelt (Pushkin Industries)
Episode Theme:
This episode investigates the international ambitions of American agribusiness kingmaker Bruce Rastetter in exporting the U.S. model of corn ethanol and carbon capture to Brazil, all while unraveling the myth that biofuels, especially corn-based ones, are true climate solutions. Through interviews with researchers, industry insiders, and activists, Amy Westervelt explores the convergence of trade wars, land use, corporate lobbying, and the environmental justice implications of the global “sustainable” aviation fuel gold rush.

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Episode Overview

In “The Saudi Arabia of Biofuels,” Drilled examines how Bruce Rastetter, an American agribusiness magnate, has attempted to establish Brazil as the world’s biofuels superpower. The episode scrutinizes the illusion of corn ethanol as a climate panacea, delves into the fraught world of carbon capture, and exposes the economic and environmental cracks in the model – both in the Midwest and the Amazon. Ultimately, it asks: who benefits from these so-called sustainable solutions, and at what cost?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Bruce Rastetter – Political Muscle and Global Ambition

• Iowa Ag Summit origins: In 2015, Rastetter wielded significant influence by quizzing potential GOP presidential candidates on ag policy at a self-created summit, emphasizing the dominance of renewable fuels in American politics.
• Quote (03:36): “If there was any question about the overriding viewpoint of the Iowa Ag Summit, look no further than the giant foam fingers one sponsor passed out. They read ‘Renewable fuels number one.’” — Amy Westervelt
• Expansion into Brazil & the Amazon: Rastetter acquired land and partnered to build ethanol plants, targeting regions with port advantage for export, all to further President Lula da Silva’s goal of making Brazil “the Saudi Arabia of sustainable aviation fuels.”
• Tensions escalate: U.S.-Brazil ethanol trade wars, tariffs, and market cutthroat politics threaten profits and reshape alliances.

2. The Big Biofuel Business Model

• Land Use and Carbon Claims (04:47–06:21):
  • Rastetter’s projects rely on vast tracts of land and the claim that corn ethanol can cut global emissions.
  • Brazilian corn ethanol is touted as “green” by leveraging “second crop” (planted after soybeans) for lower carbon accounting.
• The reality: No large-scale land-based biofuel project so far delivers on climate promises; instead, they drive land conversions and distract from real emissions solutions.

3. Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS): Hype vs. Reality

• Skeptical Evidence (07:44–14:32):
  • Host Amy Westervelt and Stanford engineer Mark Jacobson detail how carbon capture underperforms — inefficient, energy-intensive, and mainly used to extract more oil (enhanced oil recovery).
  • Quote (10:24): “In the case of coal, that energy penalty is large… You need 25% more coal, and as a result, you’ll have 25% more air pollution.” — Mark Jacobson
  • CCS often fails to deliver real “net negative” emissions, barely offsetting a fraction of the CO2 it claims to address, with significant leakage and “energy penalty.”
  • Enhanced oil recovery: 73% of captured CO2 is just used to extract more fossil fuel (12:22–13:25).
• Pipeline politics: Summit’s Midwest Carbon Express pipeline faces broad opposition: indigenous activists, environmental justice groups, landowners, and unlikely bipartisan coalitions resist land seizures and dubious climate claims.

4. Trade Wars, Tariffs, and Global Biofuel Chess

• Tariff Turbulence (17:45–24:00):
  • Trump’s erratic tariffs alternately hurt and help U.S. and Brazilian biofuel markets, creating instability for farmers and multinational “biofuel barons” like Rastetter.
  • Brazil and U.S. ag sectors have a long, love-hate relationship, competing for China’s feed markets, now extending to the race for sustainable aviation fuel (20:29–22:17).
  • Political and economic decisions—often made far from farm fields—disrupt global supply chains and expose the fragility of market-based “climate solutions”.

5. The Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Rush

• The New Gold Rush (26:28–32:44):
  • Biofuels for planes are hailed as a major climate opportunity—at least compared to cars, which are rapidly electrifying.
  • “Second crop” Brazilian corn is said to allow lower-carbon SAF, bypassing the need for U.S.-favored (but unproven) carbon capture—yet the line between “second crop” and land expansion is blurry.
  • Quote (32:44): “Biofuels in cars, bad. Biofuels in planes, good.” — Tim Sahai, Net Zero Lab, Johns Hopkins University
• Market manipulations: Pressure to serve a trillion-dollar emerging market may block broader adoption of electric vehicles, with Brazilian automakers locked into the ethanol “flex fuel” model.

6. Environmental Justice and the True Impact

• Pipeline activism and inclusion (14:32–17:06):
  • Indigenous groups and environmental justice activists warn large NGOs focus too narrowly on white landowners, neglecting renters and communities of color most at risk from infrastructure, pollution, and land grabs.
  • Quote (16:57): “Even though this pipeline is going to go by a town that has like tons of rentals, tons of BIPOC people, like they’re not having conversations with them.” — Sakawis Nobis, Great Plains Action Society
• Deforestation and land use: Despite claims, increased demand for “green” biofuels contributes to land grabs and environmental degradation, often shifting blame between crops and regions.

7. Regulatory Capture and Policy Games in the Amazon

• Lobbying and Lawmaking (38:10–40:25):
  • Rastetter’s FS company proposes Brazilian CCS rules focusing on “trade freedom,” investor protection, and Amazon investment—prioritizing profit and market “certainty” for carbon credits, not environmental safeguards.
  • Agro-corporate strategies ignore cultural/regional realities and skirt local expertise or resistance, as seen in failed attempts in the Amazon.

8. Bottom Line: Climate Solutions or Market Distractions?

• The episode closes with a critique:
  • Despite transformative economic and geographic impacts, the biofuels boom is less about climate outcomes and more about creating new markets and profit streams for existing power brokers.
  • The politics of “green” subsidies and carbon accounting continually favor large-scale agribusiness while real emissions reductions are elusive.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Carbon Capture’s Flaws:
  • “The models that paint it as a great solution to climate change assume it will capture 90% or more of emissions... In reality, it’s been more like 50 to 70%. And remember, we’re just talking about the emissions generated at a power plant... best case, carbon capture could deal with around 5% of global emissions, but we don’t have enough storage capacity for that much.” — Amy Westervelt (08:25–09:28)
• On biofuel’s global reach:
  • “So there’s this way in which both Brazil and the U.S. are sort of again, finding themselves sort of frenemies... Who’s going to feed jet fuel to the world in 2025?” — Tim Sahai (22:17–22:28)
• On the corrupt logic of biofuel economics:
  • “Something not being a good climate solution has never stopped agribusiness from making money off of it.” — Amy Westervelt (36:58)
• On the ethnocentrism and challenges of American expansion into Brazil:
  • “Gringos, you know, people from Iowa tend to overlook that... you’re bringing Ag 3.0 into an Ag 0.5 culture.” — Corey Melby (39:16)

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Significant Timestamps

• [03:09] – Iowa Ag Summit and Rastetter’s political influence.
• [07:44] – Introduction to carbon capture skepticism.
• [10:24] – Mark Jacobson explains carbon capture’s “energy penalty.”
• [12:22 & 13:25] – Most captured CO2 is used for oil recovery, defeating climate goals.
• [14:32 & 16:57] – Pipeline resistance brings unexpected allies; environmental justice overlooked.
• [17:45–24:00] – U.S.-Brazil trade war, tariffs, and biofuel market manipulation.
• [26:28] – Brazil’s “Saudi Arabia of biofuel” vision and the relationship to land use.
• [32:44] – Distinction between bad/good uses of biofuels: cars vs. planes.
• [36:58] – “Something not being a good climate solution has never stopped agribusiness from making money off of it.”
• [39:16] – Cultural blind spots in U.S.-led agribusiness expansion.

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Conclusion

“The Saudi Arabia of Biofuels” illustrates the tangled web of ambitions, politics, economics, and environmental justice swirling around biofuels and market-driven climate solutions. The global push for so-called sustainable aviation fuel is less about true emissions reductions, and more about sustaining the profit and power of agriculture, energy, and political elites — often at the expense of both people and planet.

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Listen for:

• How “climate solutions” are rebranded market strategies
• The role of U.S. political operatives and trade wars in shaping the world’s energy future
• The lived realities of landowners and frontline communities resisting giant infrastructure projects
• The dangerous simplification of “green” promises in international policy and business

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Summary by [Your Podcast Summarizer]. For more climate true-crime episodes, visit Drilled’s feed.

Transcript

[Amy Westervelt]

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[Narrator/Host (possibly an ad voice or secondary narrator)]

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[Amy Westervelt]

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[Narrator/Host (possibly an ad voice or secondary narrator)]

So we thought it made sense that we ought to have a discussion. We ought to ask those questions. We're hopeful for answers.

[Reporter or Interviewer]

The summit was put on by a man named Bruce Rastetter, a wealthy Republican donor who made his money in agribusiness and who wanted to quiz potential presidential candidates about ag policy.

[Amy Westervelt]

That was NPR's Tamara Keith with a story about the Iowa Ag Summit, an event Rastetter created. Politico, NBC, the Atlantic, and a whole bunch of local Iowa media covered it, too. Lots of those stories referred to Bruce Rastetter as a Republican kingmaker in the state, and you could see why the event consisted primarily of Republican candidates being trotted out on stage, each for the same amount of time. Each asked the same questions, always by Bruce Rastetter.

[Reporter or Interviewer]

Nine potential candidates showed up, all Republicans. Each got 20 minutes on stage before an audience of hundreds and a whole riser full of cameras. They were answering sometimes wonky questions from Rastetter about farming, wind power, immigration, trade, and the big one.

[Narrator/Host (possibly an ad voice or secondary narrator)]

Let's talk about the rfs. Renewable fuels. Next subject, the rfs. You've been an unabashed supporter of the rfs. Why?

[Reporter or Interviewer]

If there was any question about the overriding viewpoint of the Iowa Ag Summit, look no further than the giant foam fingers one sponsor passed out. They read renewable fuels number one.

[Amy Westervelt]

At the time, Rastetter was backing former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as the Republican nominee for president. In 2016, as it became clear that Donald Trump would be the frontrunner, he joined Trump's Agricultural Advisory Committee. There was even talk at the time of Rastetter being named Trump's Secretary of Agriculture. Meanwhile, his efforts in Brazil were going well, too. He'd closed on the farm in Monte Grosso with the Franz Brothers, and plans for their first Brazilian ethanol plant were underway. Just a few months after his Iowa AG summit in 2015, Bruce was back in Brazil doing more land tours, this time up in the Amazon in Amapa, which travel bloggers love to describe as the most isolated state in Brazil.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

Welcome to Brazil's most isolated state. Amapa, nestled deep in the Amazon in the north of the country.

[Amy Westervelt]

Bruce was in Amapa to do business. He told a local paper at the time that the location of the state at the mouth of the Amazon with direct access to the Atlantic made it a perfect spot for agriculture. And it was in an easy reach of markets beyond Brazil. So Bruce and his partners bought a plot of land in northern Namapa and started farming. You heard last time that his business partners wasted no time getting into the shipping and port business up there, too, so they could export corn and eventually, maybe even corn ethanol. By 2020, Bruce's Brazilian company, FS, had two ethanol plants up and running in Mato Grosso. In 2021, he announced his big carbon capture pipeline project, the Midwest Carbon Express, in Iowa. And by 2023, FS had opened a third ethanol plant in Monto Grosso. For years there, everything was coming up Bruce. Until it wasn't. I'm Amy Westervelt, and this is drilled season 15 carbon cowboys, a collaboration with the Intercept Brazil to tell the story of how the ethanol kingpin of Iowa brought corn ethanol to Brazil. After the break, the cracks in the plan for global carbon domination.

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[Amy Westervelt]

Like you heard in episode one. We first started looking into this story not because of anything that happened in Brazil or Iowa, but because of something incredibly wonky carbon capture and storage. Again, this is the idea that the carbon dioxide emissions from things like power plants, refineries, and factories can be captured and either reused in some way or stored specifically. I thought I must be missing something, because some very smart people seemed to think that this was a great idea for dealing with carbon emissions. But to me, the math wasn't mathing. It sounds good at first, I know. Just put the stuff back where we got it. It comes out of the ground, right? So strip the bad stuff out and shove it back down there. Problem solved. After all, the problem with fossil fuels is really just their emissions. So if we can shove those underground, we're good. Sort of like how men deal with feelings. This of course ignores all the other environmental and health issues that come with drilling, refining and burning fossil fuels. But even if we agree to ignore air pollution for a minute, the more you think about carbon capture, the less sense it makes. First off, it's a gas, famously a substance that doesn't stay put, and in fact, projects all over the world have struggled to keep it stored, then carbon capture is pretty inefficient. The models that paint it as a great solution to climate change assume it will capture 90% or more of emissions on whatever facility it's connected to. In reality, it's been more like 50 to 70%. And remember, we're just talking about the emissions generated at a power plant or an industrial facility. So best case, carbon capture could deal with around 5% of global emissions, but we don't have enough storage capacity for that much. Finally, carbon capture requires equipment to capture the carbon and then pipe it somewhere to be stored, even if that storage tank is on site at the facility. That all requires energy, sometimes a lot of energy, usually fossil energy. So you have a whole other set of emissions. Mark Jacobson is an engineering professor at Stanford University and a vocal critic of carbon capture. He's done multiple studies on this problem, including one on specifically the energy required to power carbon capture. It's called the energy penalty.

[Mark Jacobson]

In the case of coal, I mean, that energy penalty is large. It's on the order of 25% of the energy from the coal plant. So if you get the energy from coal, you need 25% more coal, and as a result, you'll have 25% more air pollution from the coal emissions, and you need 25% more coal mining as well.

[Amy Westervelt]

Jacobsen did his energy penalty study on an actual functioning carbon capture plant, Although like a lot of others, it did close after a few years of operating.

[Mark Jacobson]

Was in Thompson, Texas, and it's called Petronova. And they added to a part of the coal plant, they added carbon capture equipment. It cost $1 billion. And instead of actually getting the energy from coal, they built a natural gas plant just to provide the electricity to run the carbon capture equipment for the coal plant. So they had to now mine gas and pipe the gas to the gas plant, burn the gas. None of the gas emissions were controlled or captured. So you had air pollution from the gas, you had carbon dioxide from the gas. And the overall efficiency of the capture equipment was not very good. It was like 55% in the first year.

[Amy Westervelt]

The plant was using so much extra energy on carbon capture, and it still was only capturing a little more than half of the carbon dioxide from the coal.

[Mark Jacobson]

They built a pipeline system, and they used that carbon dioxide they did capture. They transported it to a nearby oil field to dig out more oil through a process called enhanced oil recovery.

[Amy Westervelt]

Ah, yes, enhanced oil recovery. Injecting compressed CO2 underground to get more oil out. Turns out oil companies have been using carbon capture since the 70s, not to deal with emissions, but to optimize oil production.

[Mark Jacobson]

About 73% of all carbon dioxide captured in the world is used for enhanced oil recovery. So it gets you more oil and during that process of enhanced oil recovery, 40% of the CO2 is really straight back to the year.

[Amy Westervelt]

Jacobson said. By the time he accounted for that plus the emissions generated powering the carbon capture equipment at Petronova, it was maybe capturing around 7% of the coal plant's emissions. And that didn't account for all the new air pollution created by powering the carbon capture equipment. As natural gas became more common, oil companies had to learn how to separate carbon dioxide and do something with that, too. Carbon capture to the rescue once again. So, okay, the oil and gas industry had figured out how to use a waste product to get more oil out. How the heck had this been rebranded as a climate solution? It was in trying to answer that question that I met Carolyn Raffensperger. You heard from her a bit earlier in the season. She's the executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network and lives in Iowa. She's the one who first told me about Summit's carbon pipeline project in Iowa, the one that got Bruce Rastetter so much pushback. A pipeline company in Iowa called Summit Carbon Solutions has solicited permits in multiple states and just been given a permit by the Iowa Utilities Commission. You had the John Birch Society and the Sierra Club, you know, saying, no, you're not going to do this. And they gave permission, even knowing that the CO2 pipeline rule had not been finalized. The strange mix of opponents to the pipeline was fascinating, as was the fact that someone as prominent in Republican politics as Bruce Rastetter had somehow not realized that people would get mad if their property rights were threatened. Corey Melby, our American AG consultant in Brazil, had thoughts on that, too.

[Corey Melby]

The irony when you think of conservatives of the past, pro Constitution, land rights. Property rights were sacrosanct. You know, they would die on the cross for that. But as soon as, oh, it goes against their pipeline, they're not conservatives anymore either. They're business, period, you know?

[Amy Westervelt]

But it wasn't just libertarian property owners who objected to this approach. Almost as soon as the Midwest Carbon Express was announced, many of the same networks that had fought against the Dakota Access Pipeline mobilized quickly to fight Summit. In both Iowa and the Dakotas.

[Sakawis Nobis]

A lot of stuff that took time to figure out during Standing Rock was kind of just implemented right away. You know, people that have worked together in the past easily got together and had conversations.

[Amy Westervelt]

This is Sakawis Nobis, an indigenous activist and founder of the Great Plains Action Society, speaking to drilled reporter Aline Brown in Iowa earlier this year.

[Sakawis Nobis]

There's a great network of people that's been created because of Standing Rock? Well, I don't want to just say standing Rock, but like, there's a great network of people that have been created because of the fight here in Iowa. I don't feel like people talk about that ever. The majority of the pipeline goes through Iowa. The fight started in Iowa in 2014

[Amy Westervelt]

in the fight against the Midwest Carbon Express. They were suddenly joined by people who'd been vehement opponents to the Standing Rock movement.

[Sakawis Nobis]

It's actually become one of the extremely few issues in Iowa that brings Republicans and Democrats together to like to stop the pipeline.

[Amy Westervelt]

That has, of course, also created some tensions because it's not just landowners who are worried about how carbon capture infrastructure might impact them.

[Sakawis Nobis]

This whole thing from the beginning has been so racialized and also based on class here in Iowa. They did these meetings in the counties where the pipelines are going through and you know, they did them at nine o' clock on a frickin Wednesday morning.

[Amy Westervelt]

Nobis says many of the big environmental groups fighting the Summit Carbon pipeline have focused on the white landowning farmers. So she and other environmental justice advocates have focused their efforts on everyone else.

[Sakawis Nobis]

Even though this pipeline is going to go by a town that has like tons of rentals, tons of bipoc people, like they're not having conversations with them,

[Amy Westervelt]

she's been working to make sure that everyone in the pipeline's pathway is informed. When the Midwest Carbon Express pipeline was announced in 2021, it was due to be operational by 2024. As of this episode's published date in 2026, it has not even started construction. And that's not the only problem Bruce is facing back home. Though he endorsed Trump in both his presidential campaigns, Bruce Rastetter also publicly voiced concerns over Trump's approach, particularly tariffs. And sure enough, Trump's tariffs have been tough on American farmers.

[Narrator/Host (possibly an ad voice or secondary narrator)]

In tonight's eye on farmers caught in the middle of a trade war.

[Amy Westervelt]

President Trump has promised a new bailout for American farmers. As much as $13 billion that he said would be paid for by the tariffs.

[Corey Melby]

We're going to take some of that tariff money that we made. We're going to give it to our farmers who are for a little while going to be hurt until it kicks in. The tariffs kick into their benefit.

[Amy Westervelt]

Farm bankruptcies this year are surging. As of June, 55% more filed for bankruptcy compared to the previous year to year period. Many are now taking their frustrations directly to Republican lawmakers at town halls across the country.

[Corey Melby]

I'm about ready to lose my thorn.

[Amy Westervelt]

I am pissed and I'm pissed at you. That goes double for an American farmer that happens to also be in the agriculture industry in Brazil. If you're not an ethanol producer in the US or Brazil, you probably don't know that ethanol has become a key lever in an ongoing trade dispute between the two countries. The chances of Bruce rest at her not knowing are very slim. The tension is only increasing as farmers on both sides look to cash in on the lucrative and growing sustainable aviation fuel industry, where Brazil currently has an edge because of how it grows its corn. Remember we mentioned second crop corn earlier this season? Brazilian farmers plant soy, then corn, which means they aren't adding to the amount of farmland to grow corn. That means on paper their emissions are lower even without using carbon capture. Here's Daniel Lopez, VP of Sustainability and new business at fs, talking about that. US Corn ethanol doesn't actually achieve Net zero. So I think that often when they talk about corn ethanol, they're looking at the United States and not at the reality in Brazil, which is different. Even before the debate over whose corn ethanol is greener, for decades US farmers have complained that the US tariff on Brazilian ethanol is super lowless than 3%, while the Brazilian tariff on US ethanol is around 18%. If you're an ethanol guy with business in both countries, this is not a huge problem you can win on both sides. But for farmers on one side or the other, it's a long standing battle. Tim Sahai, who runs the Net Zero lab at Johns Hopkins University, says this is just the latest tension between farmers in the two countries.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

And the question for that American agro industry was always, how do we feed the world? We don't just want to feed America, we want to feed the world. And when you think about feeding the world, there's one country which is the most populous country in the world, in Asia, where people are getting richer and they want to eat more meat. And so that country is China. So for almost all of the 20th century, the question of who feeds China was front and center for American farmers.

[Amy Westervelt]

He says in the 1990s, American senators from farm states and ag executives were constantly going to China or hosting Chinese businessmen in the U.S. building a trade relationship, especially around soy and beef. But they weren't the only ones.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

It turns out almost identical set of relationships were formed between agribusiness in Brazil and China.

[Amy Westervelt]

And guess what folks, it comes back once again to pigs.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

So the way sort of beef is absolutely essential to American sort of ideas and American frontier And what does it mean to have prosperity? Well, you know, you have a steak every Sunday, and that's very similar to the Chinese idea of having enough pork. And then what do pigs eat while they eat crush? They eat animal feed, and they eat

[Amy Westervelt]

soy, corn and soy. So American farmers and Brazilian farmers have been wrestling for the Chinese corn and soy markets since the 90s, although Sahai says they have kind of a love hate relationship where they compete, but they also respect each other. American farmers envy the amount of land still left to develop in Brazil. And Brazilian farmers look wistfully at what seems like more high tech farming in the U.S. ethanol became an extension of that.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

So there's this way in which both Brazil and the US Are sort of again, finding themselves sort of frenemies in the same way that they were frenemies with who feeds China. You know, it's like, who's going to

[Amy Westervelt]

feed jet fuel to the world in 2025. Trump used the imbalance on ethanol tariffs as one of his justifications for a sweeping tariff campaign against Brazil that was driven largely by his support of ousted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

[Narrator/Host (possibly an ad voice or secondary narrator)]

President Trump has sent out 22 letters so far this week setting tariff rates for different countries. One of those letters is not like the other. That's the letter that he sent to Brazil, which isn't so much about the economy as it is about politics and the president's own grievances with that country. President Trump complains about the fact that Jair Bolsonaro, conservative Trump ally, former president of Brazil, is on trial there for an attempted Coup back in 2022. Trump calls that a witch hunt. And the president complains about Brazil's social media laws in this letter. Only after that does he get to the economic arguments that are supposed to be the basis of these tariffs, saying that Brazil has been treating the US unfairly.

[Amy Westervelt]

Trump threatened a 50% tariff on all goods and implemented a 40% one in August 2025. The Office of the United States Trade Representative, basically the trade arm of the White House, also launched a formal investigation into Brazil's trading practices, specifically citing poor market access for US Ethanol exports as a, quote, longstanding bilateral trade irritant. That's bad news if, say, you're building a sustainable aviation fuel refinery in the Gulf of Mexico, perfectly situated to receive Brazilian ethanol imports, and you happen to also own a company in Brazil that produces corn ethanol. Worse news, the Brazilian government has shown a willingness to offer up ethanol as the sacrificial lamb for reducing beef and coffee tariffs. Analysts said this could flood the Brazilian market with cheap US ethanol, a big problem for the producers in landlocked Brazilian states like Monto Grosso. No. And then at the last minute, amidst rising food prices and declining approval ratings, Trump rolled back the tariffs on Brazil in late 2025. The White House appears to be responding to growing frustration among consumers and voters on the issue of inflation and the cost of food. The president announcing late yesterday that he's rolling back tariffs on additional imports from Brazil, including fruit, coffee, cocoa and beef. But then he turned around and put blanket tariffs on everyone for everything less than the initial threat to Brazil, but still around three times what Brazilian farmers were paying before, which effectively does away with the idea of importing cheap Brazilian ethanol to make sustainable jet fuel in the United States. Now things are in limbo on the trade front. The White House's investigation into Brazil's trade practices is still ongoing. The tariffs are embroiled in court battles, and who knows what Trump might announce next? Meanwhile, the US Israel invasion of Iran has driven up demand for ethanol both within Brazil and beyond. Brazilian President Lula da Silva has once again been talking about Brazil as the Saudi Arabia of biofuel. Here in Germany, using a German Mace truck and with the help of a German technician, we were able to prove that our biofuel is the most extraordinary fuel in the world because it produces 90% less CO2 emissions. It reduces CO2 costs by 67 to 90%. That's why I said yesterday that Brazil is preparing to become the Saudi Arabia of biofuel.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

To be the Saudi Arabia is like you produce a lot, but you don't consume a lot. Therefore you're going to be the biggest exporter. And that just ends up coming out from the fact that Brazil has a huge amount of land.

[Amy Westervelt]

The thing about these market based climate solutions is that they're quite vulnerable to, well, market forces. And tariffs aren't the only thing out of Rastetter's control at the moment. There's also the situation with sustainable aviation fuel. Brazil's going for it in a big way, but the US under Trump is not so sure. Some of the incentives that were there when Bruce announced his Texas Sustainable aviation fuel refinery summit next gen are either gone or not quite as good anymore. And Brazil faces an uphill battle getting European buyers for corn ethanol based sustainable aviation fuel because it's known to have higher emissions than other types of ethanol. For fs, success as a sustainable aviation fuel supplier rests entirely on the way Brazil grows corn. The second crop corn thing. Again, here's Corey Explaining what that means.

[Advertiser/Promotional Voice]

We're in Brazil, you know, we can blame the cows, we can blame the soybeans, blah, blah, blah, you know, chicken or the egg. Where does the deforestation come from?

[Amy Westervelt]

Right.

[Advertiser/Promotional Voice]

Well, of course, corn is the second crop. So Brazil corn kind of gets a pass, so to speak. We're not clearing land to plant corn. The land has already been cleared. It's got soybeans on it. That's the first crop. That's what's given the carbon weight in, oh, soybeans, Heavy carbon weight.

[Amy Westervelt]

This is important for sustainable aviation fuel because second crop corn, by virtue of coming second, gets a lower carbon score than regular old corn. So whereas in the US farmers have to tap into carbon capture to lower their score, in Brazil, if they use second crop, it already starts out lower. Then adding carbon capture only sweetens the deal. FS hasn't started doing carbon capture yet. It's still building its pilot project, but it's already marketing the idea of negative emissions ethanol. Here's Lopez talking about it at last year's UN Climate Summit in Brazil.

[Mark Jacobson]

As far as I'm concerned, this is

[Corey Melby]

probably one of the one of the

[Mark Jacobson]

few very advanced BEX projects on the

[Amy Westervelt]

south for generating the first global carbon

[Mark Jacobson]

negative ethanol in the world.

[Amy Westervelt]

That word he used there, becs, that stands for bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration. It's the thing the fossil fuel industry is marketing these days as the way we can just keep burning fossil fuels while dealing with emissions. Capturing emissions from power plants and industrial facilities just hasn't really worked out. But they've positioned beccs as something that doesn't just reduce emissions, it actually removes them. On paper, this gets described as negative emissions technology, something that can actually remove emissions from the atmosphere because you're growing plants which absorb carbon dioxide and then you're turning them into fuel, but not emitting anything because theoretically you're capturing all the emissions along the way. Whether all this stuff that looks great on a spreadsheet or in a model actually translates to less emissions in the atmosphere is a whole other question, and one that businessmen are not concerning themselves with. It certainly sounds green, but then Corey said something to me that didn't add up. Okay, so you said that the soybean has gone up like, you know, say 1.5x and, and corn 4. Does that mean that some of the corn is not second crop then? Or is it a different crop that they're doing second crop corn with?

[Advertiser/Promotional Voice]

Very valid question.

[Amy Westervelt]

So maybe some of the second crop corn is actually first Crop corn and we have no way of knowing. Once again, it all depends on the market.

[Advertiser/Promotional Voice]

Corn became king in 2023. So yes, if you were within a 10, 20 mile radius of an existing ethanol mill in Marco Grosso, there they would take a portion of their farm because the bid for getting new crop corn as quickly as possible. They did plant first crop corn and they did corn corn. They planted a first crop corn and they harvested that went right to the ethno mill and then came behind with a second crop corn. That happened one year. Depending on the bid. It's possible we'll see first crop corn again, plant it in a few spots going into 2026. It is possible you will see first crop corn expand in Brazil, definitely for the next crop year.

[Amy Westervelt]

Corey, the Brazil based ag consultant says that's all down to ethanol. In other words, more and more land is being converted to corn to supply the ethanol market. That's worth thinking about if you're trying to determine the environmental benefit of corn ethanol, because as you heard earlier in the season, it's connected to high pesticide use and, and land grabbing. Sustainable aviation fuel can be made from lots of other things, different types of biofuels and waste cooking oil, for example. It's considered a solid climate solution by a lot of folks, primarily because there's not currently a great alternative for air travel. As Sahai once put it to me plainly, biofuels in cars, bad. Biofuels in planes, good.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

Currently we use a lot of fuel in cars that we absolutely do not need to use anymore because of this sort of electric technology revolution that has happened with electric cars. So they are getting cheaper than internal combustion engine cars, which basically has meant that for the first time in a hundred years, oil use is not going up and up and up. It's starting to go down and down and down. So 2018 was the last year where internal combustion engine cars peaked. And so why am I saying all of that? Well, basically it means that the market for gasoline is going down, down, down.

[Amy Westervelt]

Sahai advises various governments on industrial transition, as in if we're going to get off of fossil fuels, what exactly does that look like for my country's entire manufacturing sector? He says for Brazil, the biofuels industry is so large, they're effectively blocking electrification of vehicles.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

The Brazilian auto industry became a completely unique island of an auto industry in the world, where the Brazilian cars are the only sort of country in the world that, you know, run on what they call flex fuel engines. So you can chuck in gasoline in them, you can Chuck in ethanol in them and they just work. And you can chuck in 50, 60% ethanol in them and they still work.

[Amy Westervelt]

The Brazilian biofuels industry is powerful. It's not just going to go quietly into the night because there's a cheaper and more sustainable option for cars now in the form of electric vehicles.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

And so that has created sort of a panic amongst agribusiness interests where they basically realize that they are joined at the hip with the internal combustion engine. And if internal combustion engines go down, well, what happens to them?

[Amy Westervelt]

Sustainable aviation fuel is seen as a solution to this problem. It's something the government can offer the biofuels industry as kind of a consolation prize for slowly losing the transportation market. If they can dangle a shiny new trillion dollar market in front of these guys, the thinking goes, maybe they won't fight the electrification of vehicles so much. So there's a demand for sustainable aviation fuel and it's increasing, but there's not enough supply. Market opportunity, anyone?

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

And if we could turn that ethanol and find a way to make jet fuel in a refinery out of ethanol, then wouldn't that solve our problem? Both of these problems, the reduction in demand and the fact that we need to supply not just like 1% of the world's jet fuel, which is what we currently do with green jet fuel, but 100% of the world's jet fuel over the next 20 or 30 years.

[Amy Westervelt]

Sahai draws a distinction between corn ethanol and ethanol made from sugarcane, which still dominates the Brazilian market. He says since the sugar cane is grown in areas that were cleared hundreds of years ago, it's less damaging. And sugar is a more efficient way to make ethanol because it's so high in starch. But Brazilian scientists don't necessarily agree. Here's Lucas Ferrante, a biologist at the National Institute for Amazonian Research. Since sugarcane plantations have expanded into areas that were altered or degraded by other crops, the perception has taken hold that biofuels in Brazil do not cause deforestation. And then this came into question when these crops started appearing in the Amazon, because they will have to occupy areas that were previously occupied by other crops, displacing them and causing deforestation. Meanwhile, Sahai says corn ethanol is hard to make a case for even in the Brazilian second crop context.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

From a neutral scientific perspective, you would say sugarcane ethanol has lower carbon intensity. It's just cleaner, just use that, don't use corn. But all accounting is political and all how subsidy design is political. So what you're essentially going to get is this kind of rear guard Kind of stop gap action by the corn growers to make sure that they qualify for every country's subsidies.

[Amy Westervelt]

Something not being a good climate solution has never stopped agribusiness from making money off of it. Bruce Rastetter's problem isn't environmental, though it's economic. Summit doesn't produce corn ethanol in the US And US corn producers don't do second crop corn. The only ways to get corn ethanol to his sustainable aviation fuel refinery are to import cheap corn ethanol from Brazil or get the dozens of ethanol refineries who've signed on to the Midwest Carbon Express hooked up to it and get their low carbon corn ethanol to Texas. Both pieces of the puzzle are now in jeopardy. But at the end of April, Summit Next Gen, Bruce's SAF refinery in Texas quietly secured a permit for producing sustainable aviation fuel from sugarcane ethanol. The US does not produce sugarcane ethanol at commercial scale, so I wonder where he'll be getting it from. You heard last time about how Bruce has ventured into the Amazon and his Brazilian company FS Fueling Sustainability is now working to get carbon capture approved there too. Brazil's regulation on carbon capture and storage is still being shaped and a lot of academics, politicians and businessmen have contributed suggestions to the government on it, including Rastetter's Brazilian company fs. Their proposal encouraged lawmakers to preserve the, quote, freedom of trade and coexistence of different carbon markets. And highlighted the, quote, high technological and financial value of CCS projects, emphasizing that their success depends on legal certainty and regulatory conditions that favor new investments. It also suggested that CCS be a priority activity for investment in the Amazon and recommended a simplification of mechanisms that enable the international trade of carbon credits from CCS projects. We've already talked about how the company has a friendly relationship with the government, but it's not winning every battle just yet. All the things Corey tried to warn Bruce and the guys about when it comes to trying to farm the Amazon are holding true.

[Corey Melby]

You're at the mouth of the Amazon. You don't have all this Mato gross of BS to deal with with getting stuff to market, so to speak. So you look at the map, but the local culture, this is not like the Germans and the Italians in Mato Rosso. It is quite different. And that gets back to Brazilian, you know, cultural sensitivity per region. Gringos, you know, people from Iowa tend to overlook that, you know, that's been up and down there. They've had their challenges there. I kind of told them not to go there to begin with and then they asked me with on a tour to help interpret because they wanted to buy more land. I said, you probably shouldn't. It's not a bad idea. It's just you're dealing with locals that have no knowledge of large equipment, don't know how to run anything. You know, how much time are you willing to spend on education? The locals, you know what I mean, they have no idea what modern ag is. So you're bringing AG 3.0 into an AG 0.5, you know, culture.

[Amy Westervelt]

Things could wind up working out well for Bruce on both continents. Like his business partners in Brazil, he seems to land on his feet. But whether these particular ventures succeed or not, they've already had an impact. They've completely transformed Monto Grosso. They've cemented a role for corn ethanol in multiple markets, including now in the sustainable aviation fuels market. And they've helped to tilt the market in favor of climate solutions that come with some pretty big environmental problems. Next time, what that looks like globally and whether the genie can ever be put back in the bottle. We reached out to Bruce Rastetter, Summit Agricultural Group, Summit Carbon Solutions, Harold Hamm, fs, Paolo and Marino, Franz, Miguel Vaz, Ribeiro, and all Brazilian and US government agencies mentioned in this season. They all declined interviews, but we have incorporated responses from their spokespeople throughout.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

Carbon Cowboys Cowboys of the Isejado is a collaboration between Drilled and the Intercept Brazil.

[Amy Westervelt]

The show was reported and written by Felipe, Sabrina and me, Amy Westervelt.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

Our editors are Audrey Queen in the US And Alice de Souza in Brazil.

[Amy Westervelt]

Additional reporting from Lazaro Sor. Our senior producer and sound designer is Martin Zaltz. Ostwyk Audio production and sound design in Brazil by Marcia Heverdosa and Felipe Mux. The amazing Lula Voiceover in this episode was gifted to us by Gabrielle Rubin.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

Theme song and original music by Eric Terrena.

[Amy Westervelt]

Additional music by Martin Zaltz Ostwick. Our engineer is Peter Duff.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

Artwork for Drilled is by Matt Fleming.

[Amy Westervelt]

US Fact checking from Naomi Barr.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

Brazil fact checking by Studio Frontera.

[Amy Westervelt]

Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton with the First Amendment Project. We are also proud members of Reporter Shield. Big thanks also to Andrew Fishman, president of the Intercept Brazil.

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

Drilled is distributed by Pushkin Industries.

[Amy Westervelt]

Huge thanks to the team there including Greta Cohen, Eric Sandler, Grace Ross, Morgan Ratner, Owen Miller, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Brian Schrebernek and Jake Flanagan. To hear the Portuguese version of this series, head over to the Intercept Brazil's site or search for the Intercept Brazil's podcast feed. Wherever you listen to podcasts,

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

There are two kinds of people in the world. People who think about climate change and people who are doing something about it. On the Zero podcast, we talk to both kinds of people. People you've heard of, like Bill Gates.

[Advertiser/Promotional Voice]

I'm looking at what the world has

[Narrator/Host (possibly an ad voice or secondary narrator)]

to do to get to zero, not

[Advertiser/Promotional Voice]

using climate as a moral crusade, and

[Expert/Analyst or Guest Speaker]

the creative minds you haven't heard of yet. It is serious stuff, but never doom and gloom. I am Akshat Ratty. Listen to Zero every Thursday from Bloomberg Podcasts on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcast.

[Amy Westervelt]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.