Stratos Renewables has commented on the recent controversies surrounding the corn ethanol industry. Studies on corn ethanol published in, among other sources, Science magazine, and recent reports about the delays in the openings of corn ethanol facilities are mounting.

The consensus in many of these reports is that the greenhouse gas benefits of ethanol have been greatly overstated - particularly when the derivative feedstock is corn.

Stratos company officials contend, however, that all ethanol is not the same. Sugarcane-based ethanol, for instance, currently remains the only actively used renewable fuel source that reduces carbon emissions by more than it takes to produce the fuel.

Authors of these studies argue that the energy-intensive nature of corn production, government subsidies, and the climate impacts of land use for corn-based ethanol production render the overall environmental benefits of ethanol small at best.

Even Republican Presidential nominee, John McCain, someone traditionally unwilling to rock the boat on the current administration's energy policy, has spoken out against the U.S.'s position supporting corn-based ethanol and has called for changes more in line with Brazil's sugarcane-based ethanol industry.

To many in the advanced biofuel industry, those calls have long been heard, particularly in places such as historically high sugarcane-producing regions like Peru.

"I think some of the ethanol studies are a little misleading, as there are many concrete benefits of substituting ethanol for oil that are often not considered and frequently the studies do not adequately distinguish among different feedstocks," said Roger Ballentine, energy and environmental advisor to Peruvian sugarcane ethanol company, Stratos Renewables Corporation (SRNW).

"The key item most often sited in these studies is the use of corn as the primary feedstock, and there are huge differences in the cost of harvesting and producing ethanol from corn than from sugarcane.

"The use of corn as the primary feedstock, and the subsidies attached to the corn agricultural industry, have been widely criticized as environmentally problematic and as contributing to high food prices - but those criticisms don't apply to sugarcane.

"Having said that, there is no question that the use of ethanol can prove beneficial. I contend that showcasing the environmental advantages of ethanol from sugarcane - particularly from land that has not been deforested to make way for agriculture - will lead the newly-energized anti-ethanol contingent to reconsider their broad criticisms," continued Ballentine.

Stratos Renewables is currently in the development stages of becoming the first-to-market sugarcane ethanol producer in Peru. Stratos plans to utilize the country's underdeveloped northern coastal region to cultivate and harvest its sugarcane in order to offer competitive industry, environmental and economic advantages of low-cost, high-yield sugarcane ethanol production.

An added advantage to developing ethanol in Peru is that it's not subject to the U.S. import tariff incurred by Brazilian-exported ethanol.

Sugarcane ethanol production is far less costly as it requires fewer steps during the production process. It's also significantly more efficient than production from corn and thus has a lower greenhouse gas profile. This is why "advanced biofuels" like efficient sugarcane ethanol are given special preference under the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) recently signed into law in the United States.

The RFS requires consumption of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022 - up from about 7 billion gallons a year today - with a minimum of 5 billion gallons coming from "advanced biofuels."

"There are many good economic and public policy reasons for us to be using more ethanol from a myriad of sources - but there is no question that some biofuels have clear environmental and economic advantages over others," noted Ballentine.