Manufacture of ethanol costs more engery going in than we get out. It is a politically correct solution but energy efficiency wise, you loose. Several South American states have been doing this for decades. They import less oil but they get less energy for the energy put in than they would get if they used gas.

When you take into account the cost of farming the land(tractors use fuel), growing the corn(fertilizer etc), making the alcohol etc, you wind up using more energy like gasoline, electricity etc to make the ethanol than it costs us to get gasoline. Someday, if oil becomes expensive enough the equation will tilt in favor of ethanol, but even at $3/g gas, it is still too energy wasteful to use alcohol.

About the only advantage of using ethanol for now is that 1) farmers love it, it is essentially a huge subsidy and 2)At least it is locally produced 3) treehuggers love it.

Much as the tree huggers hate petroleum, it is still the most cost effective solution to personal transportation fuel, that is why the gasoline and diesel engies are stil the most popular motive source for over 100 years. So we will be using petroleum at least for now. Let's hope for Fusion energy to takeoff one of these days, then we can tell OPEC to kiss our hineys.

Jim Henderson