Sugar cane already powers a growing number of Brazil's cars with ethanol, and fuels nights of endless conversation inspired by a local cane-based liquor called cachaca.

Brazil's sugar and ethanol industry says cane is now also set to provide much more of the country's electricity within a decade through more efficient burning of the bagasse leftovers of sugar and ethanol production here.

"By 2020 you're looking at 15 percent of the national demand (for electric energy) in Brazil," said Adhemar Altieri, a spokesman for Brazil's center-south Unica sugar cane industry association.

The burning of the fibrous, cellulosic cane stalk after crushing to extract the sucrose already provides 3 percent of Brazil's electricity needs, as well as powering the mills.

As the ethanol sector grows to provide fuel for Brazil's fast-growing fleet of "flex-fuel" cars, which can run on any mix of ethanol and gasoline, new mills are being fitted with more efficient boilers that recover more heat from burning bagasse to provide more renewable power.

"It is renewable, it is clean and it is a by-product of something else. It just increases the (benefits) of the biofuel," Altieri said.

By happy coincidence, the cane harvest when bagasse is most plentiful coincides with the South American country's dry season, when water levels dip at the country's hydroelectric dams that supply about 85 percent of the nation's energy.

"It is another benefit you are getting from (cane). Now you can light up a city. Before, it was just enough to run your operation," Altieri said during a visit to the Barra Bonita cane mill, the world's largest, owned by Brazil's Cosan.-Reuters