Reply #25: Ethanol takes more energy to produce than it yields.

[elocs]

It's a great idea if you are a corn farmer or ADM, but otherwise it is a loser. Corn takes a lot of energy, water, and fertilizer to grow and it depletes the topsoil. Ethanol plants use energy to make the ethanol and some burn tonnes of coal to do it. Using corn or any other plant to produce energy is subject to the same variables as growing for food: weather and drought. There is not enough land in this country to replace an appreciable amount of gas that we now use.
Add to all of this the fact that a gallon of ethanol has 1/3 less energy than a gallon of gas, so you use 1/3 more to go the same distance. Americans want that one magic bullet that will allow us to continue on our merry energy wasting ways. It ain't going to happen. It's going to take a combination of a number of different approaches, so I wouldn't be putting too many eggs in the ethanol basket. Things that seem too good to be true usually are.