Reminds me of the corn subsidy called ethanol. When corn production involves four passes through the field by internal compustion fuel driven vehicles, plus a visit to the energy using processing plant and government help in the growing and processing steps, it isn't a benefit to energy savings either. Not to mention it is not capable of producing the same amount of btu's per gallon as gasoline.
Not quite, the corn has stored energy in the form of sugar. Yeast cheaply transforms the sugar into alcohol. The expensive part is seperating the mash and water from the alcohol. It works because the sugar is made with free energy from the sun. But you are correct, there are fewer BTU's per gallon of ethanol than gasoline. However, it is still not as cheap to make ethanol than gasoline.