its own investment in R&D. Part of the ethanol industry's woes have resulted from Petrobrás’ pricing policies. Under the influence of the government, its major stockholder, Petrobrás artificially depressed petrol prices between 2011 and 2014 to control inflation. This in turn depressed ethanol prices, making ethanol uneconomic to produce. This policy ended up eating into Petrobrás’ own revenue, forcing it to cut back its investment in oil and gas exploration. As Petrobrás alone is responsible for about 10% of all fixed capital investment in Brazil, this trend, along with the corruption scandal shaking the company since 2014, will certainly have ramifications for Brazil's overall investment in R&D. Brazil generates nearly three-quarters (73%) of its electricity from hydropower. This contribution was as high as four-fifths in 2010 but the share of hydropower has been eroded by a combination of declining rainfall and ageing hydroelectric plants, many of which date back to the 1960s and 1970s. Intensive use of thermoelectric power plants operating on fossil fuels has compensated for much of the loss, since the share of new sources of renewable energy, such as solar and wind, in the energy mix remains small. Moreover, although Brazil has made great strides in the use of bioethanol in transportation, there has been little focus on research and innovation in energy generation, be it in terms of developing new sources of energy or improving energy efficiency. In light of the foregoing, there is little reason to expect public investment in energy R&D to rebound to the levels seen at the turn of the century that would rebuild Brazil's international competitiveness in this field. Space science and technology have been a government priority for decades. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Brazil invested almost US$1 billion in developing space infrastructure around the National Institute of Space Research (INPE), leading to the launch of the first scientific satellite built entirely in Brazil in 1993 (SCD-1). Between 1999 and 2014, Brazil and China built a series of five remote sensing satellites for environmental monitoring within the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellites (CBERS) programme. Brazil has now achieved the critical mass of skills and infrastructure required to dominate several space technologies. It is determined to master the complete chain of space technologies, from material sciences, engineering design, remote sensing, aperture-synthetic radars, telecommunications and image processing to propulsion technologies. The joint Argentinian–Brazilian SABIA-MAR mission will be studying ocean ecosystems, carbon cycling,