This is an excerpt from EERE Network News, a weekly electronic newsletter.

March 27, 2013

Brazil and the United States Advance Their Strategic Energy Dialogue

Representatives of the United States and Brazil met in mid-March in Brasilia, Brazil, to advance the Strategic Energy Dialogue, a presidential-level partnership that provides an overarching framework to deepen energy cooperation between the two nations' energy sectors. The Strategic Energy Dialogue, announced by President Obama and Brazilian President Rousseff in March 2011, created a series of bilateral initiatives involving biofuels, renewable energy and energy efficiency, and the Smart Grid, as well as initiatives for oil and gas development and nuclear power.

Deputy Secretary Daniel Poneman of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) met with Mãrcio Pereira Zimmermann, Brazil's deputy minister of mines and energy, to co-chair the second meeting of the Strategic Energy Dialogue. According to a joint statement released at the meeting, the bilateral dialogue has significantly advanced cooperation between the two countries on biofuels, including analysis work on the sustainability of biofuels, research and development of biofuel conversion technologies, and cooperation on aviation biofuels. The meeting highlighted an agreement between Brazilian oil producer Petrobas and DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop technology for producing advanced biofuels and to evaluate the emissions produced by these biofuels. Brazil and the United States have also agreed to cooperate on biofuels projects in other countries and to share their plans for biofuel production and supply, potentially complementing each other's biofuel production.

In the area of renewable energy and energy efficiency, DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is helping Eletrobas—the largest electric utility in Latin America—to develop a test center for building components while DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is helping Cepel, Eletrobas' research arm, with industrial energy efficiency topics. The Energy Department and Cepel also organized a workshop on distributed wind generation in August 2012. The two countries are preparing to hold a workshop in Rio de Janeiro in September 2013 focused on the Smart Grid and electricity transmission. See the Energy Department press release and the joint statement on the Strategic Energy Dialogue.