Costa Rica’s state refinery, RECOPE, announced they will be mixing the “super” gasoline with ethanol as of May 2019.

According to Alejandro Muñoz, president of RECOPE, the plan is to include a 10% of alcohol per liter of super gas; at a later date, the “regular” or “plus” gas will also be mixed.

Ethanol or alcohol is naturally produced by the fermentation of sugars by yeasts via petrochemical processes; it is used as a clean-burning fuel source.

The 10% of ethanol that will be mixed with the fuel is the authorized percentage, and, affirmed Muñoz responds to the process of consultation with vehicle importing groups in the country, which considered this to be the “most adequate for the type of engine technology that is brought to the country”.

Mixing gasoline with ethanol would bring down the price by a small amount, but, more importantly, it would help reduce as much as 38 thousand tons of carbon emissions by end of 2019.

The mix of ethanol and gas is of common use in many countries in the world.

The Vice-Minister of Environment and Energy, Rolando Castro, also affirmed that part of the plans in the mid to long term is to promote the use of biofuels and their mix with gas during this administration, by involving for instance cane producers. Castro considers that by making this changes the national carbon emissions could be reduced by 10%.

Recope estimates based in studies by the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) that Costa Rica will have a fleet of 4.21 million vehicles by 2037, which will be dominated by motorcycles, electric vehicles and conventional vehicles, in that order. This fleet would be responsible for 20% of the country’s emissions in that year.

The use of ethanol an biofuels also have many opposing voices, some who consider it can cause damages to the cars’ engines.