Ethanol is a loser.
From Environment News Service:
” Corn Ethanol Takes More Energy Than It Makes
BERKELEY, California, July 13, 2005 (ENS) - Using ethanol as an additive to make gasoline burn cleaner does more harm than good to the environment, finds a new report by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The study concludes that the cumulative energy consumed in corn farming and ethanol production is six times greater than the power the ethanol provides in a car engine.
The paper, published in the journal “Critical Reviews in Plant Science,” comes as Congress debates a provision in the energy bill that would double the amount of ethanol to be used as a gasoline additive to five billion gallons a year by 2012.”
The rest of the article explains how they arrived at their conclusion.
You are correct,
Another statistic taken from close study, shows that it takes 1 gallon of fuel to produce 1.2 gallons of Ethanol. This also does not take into account the reduced fuel economy that ethanol burning vehicles suffer because of the low flash point of ethanol.
The equivalent energy yield compared to fossil fuels easily pushes the yield of Ethanol below a 1 to 1 ratio.
See my reply at 50, and go back and do some more research.