摘要：As a promising source of renewable energy, biodiesel has received incentivesthrough public policies in various countries. While some countries have adoptedpolicies based on economic incentives for production and consumption, political discourse in Brazil has placed emphasis on the social role that biodiesel can play.The main goal of this paper is to carry out an analysis of public policies in Brazil to identify whether there is indeed a social bias associated with biodiesel or bothethanol and biodiesel, which has had its macro-environment configured from thesame footprint. The methodology uses text mining techniques to extract informationfrom policy and program documents of the Brazilian government involving theseliquid biofuels. After collection and preparation, a total of 624 official documents published between 1997 and 2006 comprised the textual basis of the research. The results indicate some similarities when the configurations of the macro-environment for ethanol and biodiesel have been compared. However, it is clear that biodiesel is more strongly identified with the social dimension. In conclusion, this studysuggests that public policy in Brazil has, in fact, characterized biodiesel as a socialfuel.
关键词：Biodiesel; ethanol; macro-environmental analysis; public policy; government; biofuels; text mining
