Some time ago I was told by someone that should be in a position to know that it takes more energy in Diesel fuel form to farm the corn, plus the additional energy to pump the water to irrigate it, than can be produced by burning ethanol fuel.

Plus the Ogallala aquifer is running low. That's not good.

The situation is different in Brazil, where ethanol fuel is produced from sugar cane. That is a practical way to produce and use ethanol fuel, but due to our climate we cannot grow it here.

A clip from a disreputable source, wiki: "There are no longer any light vehicles in Brazil running on pure gasoline. Since 1976 the government made it mandatory to blend anhydrous ethanol with gasoline, fluctuating between 10% to 22%."

There is an urban legend going around in some circles, and I don't know if it's factual or not, and that is that biofuels damage the valves in an internal combustion engine.

Taken all together, the use of corn to produce ethanol and then use it to supplement gasoline is regarded as a stupid joke in western Kansas, where I grew up and still have many connections to. But, because of the government subsidies, it actually is profitable to grow corn, sure, sell it to the highest bidder, that's capitalism at work.

But it's not efficient at all, and yes, natural gas is the way to go. A whole lot of farmers that grow corn that is then used to produce biofuel drive pickup trucks that are powered with propane, or sometimes, natural gas.

If you're a farmer, of course you're going to go for the highest profits you can, and when the U.S. government pays you to grow corn, yes, you'll grow the corn!

I sure hope that the cellulosic ethanol research is going to be commercially fruitful. Then grass, wood chips and other non-food sources can be used instead of corn and a much more sustainable ethanol source can be sustainably grown here in the US. It would be nice if those corn ethanol plants could be retrofitted for cellulosic ethanol at that point so that the corn belt farmers could still benefit from sustainable ethanol.

While the energy output ratios are much better for sugar cane than corn, I'm not sure how sustainably sugar cane is produced. Converting brush and prairie into ethanol sounds much better in the long run.

Off-topic, I stopped at a drought dried out corn field in the area to look at the ears, and while the ears may be smaller than many years, it sure looked well worth harvesting.

Most of the current production of corn is used for unsustainable and/or unhealthy products, whether it's for high-fructose corn syrup, fatting up livestock in highly polluting feedlots that require massive use of antibiotics to feed Americans' addiction to an all-meat diet, or for the ethanol fuels mentioned in this letter. All of this requires massive inputs of fossil-derived fuels and chemicals, which itself is completely unsustainable and highly polluting.

Bottomline-- industrial agriculture needs drastic reform, and even replacement with a comprehensive return to family farms and locally based organic agriculture.

Hunger Games, by George Monbiot

"The poor will starve so that the rich can drive."

http://www.monbiot.com/2012/08/13/hunger-games/

There are 76,100 BTUs in a gallon of ethanol compared to 114,000 BTUs in a gallon of gasoline. Hence, the mileage is not as good when burning ethanol or ethanol blended fuels. Most "gasoline" that we purchase at the pump is about 10% ethanol. A bill sneaked through the Kansas legislature a couple years back that allowed this lower concentration to be sold without advising the public that they are buying an ethanol-blended fuel. I have been told that it takes about a gallon of fossil fuel to convert grain to ethanol and then the price is subsidized. The retail gas station gets a government subsidy for each gallon of ethanol it sells.

My initial reaction was that of great, we have an abundance, we pay farmers not to grow crops on land, we can grow more corn for ethanol. But the result has not been a reduction of fuel prices. It has raised corn prices. And that affects world hunger. All things considered, I don't think ethanol is the answer!

I remember seeing sugar cane fields in southern Texas when on vacation one year. So apparently sugar cane can be grown is the country. No need to import from Brazil.

One problem might be rat infestation. There were plenty of them in those sugar cane fields.

Ethanol has it's usages. If your car has 15:1 compression it's pretty good stuff except for the corrosion and hygroscopy.

OTOH, I think it's pretty dumb to fuel your car instead of have food. We should stop the ethanol craze, go back to unleaded and use our own oil in our cars and save our food for our tables.

Speaking of fail, demagoguery is not a substitute for fact.

Per unit of energy, gasoline is “cleaner” than ethanol and much more economical.

Per unit of energy, CNG is even more environmentally friendly than ethanol and an order of magnitude cheaper.

As a transportation fuel, CNG technology has been around for decades. My grandpa ran his pickup on it in the 60s and 70s. It’s ready to be the bridge between fossil fuels and the next generation fuels when they come on line in 10-20 years. It will improve air quality immediately and provide consumers a 30-40% reduction in transportation fuel costs. Think of the economic “stimulus” that increase in Americans’ disposable income will provide.

Ethanol (from US corn) is a failure economically and environmentally. On top of the environmental impact, it makes no sense to keep pouring money into another failed government boondoggle especially when we have to borrow 40 cents of every dollar we spend.

I suddenly remembered something that I saw in the 1980s. It was in a magazine that was published during World War II, when gasoline was strictly rationed.

A farmer had installed a wood burning stove in the back of his pickup, and was burning wood to make steam to power it. So, he wasn't limited by the gas rationing at all.

But the point was made that the range of the vehicle was rather limited, and it did take a while to fire it up to go somewhere. And then when he ran out of wood, he could just about always find enough twigs and dead branches to go farther, at no cost at all. But it probably was a lot of work.

I think that the eventual first real solution to our nation's energy needs will be the use of coal.

Sure, many people say that there's no such thing as "clean coal", but those people need to be reminded that it was definitely scientifically proven in the 1700s, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a speed of a mile a minute, that is, 60 mph, could never be attained because the vibrations that such a speed would produce would break every bone in the human body. And, getting to the moon? Totally impossible.

With a century or two of experimentation, I simply cannot believe that it will not be possible to pulverize coal, and then with some refining, produce a very clean burning fuel.

And maybe in about 400 years, assuming our technological culture survives, many new ways will be developed to collect energy in ways that are totally impractical today.

I love the breathless stammering of the intellectually constipated statist liberals who can’t understand why they lack the ability to form a cogent argument in favor of wind, solar, and ethanol when confronted with facts to the contrary. I think the appeal of these ideas must be the fact they are failures. Promoting a successful approach to energy is just not something they identify with.

Everyone agrees crude-oil based fuels for ground transportation are harmful in many different ways and need to be replaced. Totally clean, renewable sources of transportation fuel are not practical in their current state of evolution. CNG is a much better alternative and is available now. It should be used to get us off crude oil until the other technologies finally mature to the point they are viable.

If carbon footprint is the yardstick, than Ethanol is more harmful to the environment per unit of energy than gasoline is, not to mention what it does to grocery prices and tax payer’s wallets.

Like corn ethanol, wind and solar wouldn’t exist without government subsidies. In an era where less than 50% (and shrinking) of the population pays income taxes and 40% (and growing) of every dollar the government spends is borrowed, is it wise to pour money into energy ideas that cannot stand on their own merits in the market place – not to mention the net negative impact on the environment wind and solar produce.