Application of Interpretive Structural Modeling in Brazil's Alcohol Fuel Program

Abstract

Many countries are currently experiencing severe problems because of high and increasing prices for fossil fuels. As these fuels become scarcer and even more expensive, these problems will grow worse. Consequently, more attention is being given to the development of fuels derived from renewable resources. But to reach that time when automobile and other needs are being met on a large scale by fuel from renewable resources, many important developments will be required. Brazil's National Alcohol Program is an extensive program to develop the systems required for producing alcohol from sugarcane and other crops and for developing engines to use alcohol as a fuel. It involves the development of improved varieties of sugarcane, getting them into production, increasing total cultivated land area, increasing milling capacity, instituting a system of paying for cane by sucrose content instead of weight, developing improved distillation technologies, increasing distillation capacity, increasing the means for blending alcohol with gasoline, and developing new engines to use alcohol as a fuel. One of the major Brazilian agencies involved in the National Program used interpretive structural modeling in defining its obligations in the program. This paper describes how that was done.