I don't for a moment consider ethanol to be taking food away from anyone. I do wish those that claim such a great environmental benefit comes from its usage would consider the impact resulting from the farming procedures needed to see the crop to harvest. It seems the studies always concentrate on burning the stuff in an engine, and never on what's needed to get it to that state.
I think a study that compared the environmental impact beginning from obtaining and refining petroleum all the way to burning it in the engine, to planting, growing, and harvesting the crop AND turning it into ethanol and burning that in the same engine, would be interesting.
Has been done numerous times. Pick the data you want to get the results you want.
Anti-ethanol use 1980's wet mill production figures for conversion of corn to alcohol, disregard any credit for the feed portion of the corn returned to the animal feed market which amounts to around a quarter to a third of the value of each bushel of corn, use ag production numbers twenty years old when we ran tractors that made 12 horsepower hours per gallon of fuel instead of 18 like current tractors and used lots more tillage and intensive methods than now, use corn yields from days gone by instead of current corn yields. All you have to do is use the right figures and show that ethanol is net negative energy efficient. Oh, and I almost forgot my favorite one, count the energy radiated by the sun as part of its energy usage.
If you are pro-ethanol, you use the latest data from the most efficient dry mills as production, use modern hybrid yields, give the sun a pass and figure it is going to radiate whether we use the energy or not, use modern ag production expenses of inputs, etc.
Ethanol quit getting any subsidies several years back (initially some cost share money to get plants built and a blenders credit for the ones who blended the ethanol with gas - that is all gone and has been for a while). So if ethanol is net negative energy, the marketplace will sort that out in pretty short order. Unless it is useful for something other than just its BTU content, say something like an oxygenate that's needed to make cheap gas usable in engines.
It is about like every other damn thing in this world anymore. There are no facts or scientists. Just people with agendas. Like the old saying goes, figures lie and liars figure.
Edit: Here is at least one source of energy efficiency. Lots of others available with a search, both pro and con. Choose the agenda you wish to believe.
net energy efficiency ethanol "A 2006 University of California Berkeley study, after analyzing six separate studies, concluded that producing ethanol from corn uses marginally less petroleum than producing gasoline.[2]"
