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Hope it's ok for the thread to drift a bit...
I don't claim to be any sort of expert; I just read way too much & I know people who know more than me. :-)
The most believable stuff I've read indicates that there is a net energy gain from corn, but it's just nowhere near as good as almost any other source. Sugar cane, sugar beets, even switch grass & tree trunks have a better yield than corn. I believe that Al is right about the reason that we are so focused on corn in the USA. In DC there are a few more than 500 legislators and over 37,000 lobbyists. Corn prices seem to be going up faster than crude oil lately. Farmers here in MS, where corn has never been a preferred cash crop, have quit growing soy & cotton to grow corn.
The most promising stuff isn't even alcohol; there are companies working now on some (old) technologies that use algae to make substances like butanol, etc that can directly replace gasoline & diesel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biobutanol
Indirectly related: A couple of years ago when diesel was around $3.00/gal, a friend who's family runs a trucking operation told me that he could make biodiesel from virgin soy oil for around $2.00-$2.50/gal. That's without any government subsidies for 'alternative energy'.
Charlie
Al Gietzen wrote:
I'm not Charlie but in my opinion, corn is one of the worst due to
competition w/ food consumers. -------------
I'm not Charlie either, but in my opinion corn is the worst because it is a
no-gainer - meaning it takes as much energy (+- depending on data source) to
produce the corn and make the ethanol as you get back from the ethanol. And
burning ethanol still puts CO2 into the atmosphere. If it weren't for the
heavy lobbying (read campaign contributions and other perks for politicians)
by the major grain companies (ADM, Cargil, etc.) over the past decade or
more; who are now making big bucks producing the stuff from corn with
government subsidies - there would not be a corn/ethanol program in this
country.
Making ethanol from sugar cane, as they do in Brazil, makes some sense.
They are achieving energy out/energy in of greater than 8 : 1 in the newer
plants.
Al G
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