When? If so, you have a license to print money. When it's costing every large company over $2 a gallon to produce and Brazil is producing it at $1 a gallon after 20 years of government mandated usage, you can do it for $.25 a gallon? You could be a Billionaire and solve the energy crisis to boot!
Someone asked about the engine I used. It was a 327 Chevy with double hump heads, Edlebrock manifold with a 750 Holley. I had 11:5 to 1 aluminum pistons and a CD ignition. I could burn ethanol or white gas in it either one without changing much. The spark could be advanced further with ethanol and the plugs ran cooler on ethanol. Cam was solid lifter 30/30. I wasn't rich. Pretty much off the shelf stuff in the old days.
Back to your question. Just a few weeks ago, before the State of the Union Address, Sugar was almost half the price it is today. Corn is not the cheapest, most efficient way to make ethanol. Sugar feedstock is( right now). Sweet taters, sugar beets, and sugar cane, would give good cheap yields, with refined sugar being ok, but it has been refined so it already has built in costs you don't really need. The point I try to make on these threads is we could get the crops from South America, Haiti, Dom Republic, Africa, etc, at LOW cost. These people are getting aid from us now to live, why not give them a market for their products. If we could switch to ethanol fuel, then we could have VARIOUS sources for the feedstock. Left over corn, rice( we can't sell to Japan or China), potato's, sorghum, Sunchokes, etc, would all work. The cellulose ethanol is coming but we haven't perfected large sources for the enzymes needed to make it from grass and such. We have the ability, just not commercial quantity of the enzyme. Yeast replicates itself, but the enzyme is a patented franken thingy from a testube. Sort of like the bacteria we have now that eats oil spills in the oceans. If we get an organism that will make the enzyme so we can farm it, we are home free. I hear we are within 5 years of that.
Sunchokes are sort of like Sunflowers with a tuber root. They can be grown 3 crops a year, and are hard to kill. If you harvest them and just leave the land, they will grow again from the left over pieces in the soil. They are very starchy like a potato and taste sort of like chestnuts. As far as I know they grow like weeds so no fertilizer is required. You make the ethanol just like you would from corn or potato's, by making a beer first. We could do that right now if there was a market for them. You might find them in a health food store called "Jerusalem artichoke".
When I was a kid, we used to walk the highways picking up pop bottles for the deposit. What if the divided highways were planted with a crop of sunchokes and the state mowed those down instead of weeds? The unemployed getting checks, prisoners, illegal aliens, teens wanting to make money, etc, all could go down the highways digging these tubers for profit for the state. There are hundreds of ideas out there, but we have to be determined to do it and not just discuss it endlessly.
Nicaragua is just about to go Sandinista again because we have done squat for them since Reagan gave them democracy. They are still poor, they have no export and no hope for the future. Sugar cane from them would give them a future without Communism and death squads.
One more topic. About the efficiency of ethanol vs gas. If you raise the compression ratio and use turbochargers, and advance the spark, use a smaller, lighter engine, the millage would be GREATER than a gas engine. The guru's start whipping out their slide rules and talking BTU's and forget the efficiency of the ethanol engine is greater. If you want Flexfuel, then yes, the millage will suffer with ethanol. If you build a 4 banger with 12:1 pistons and a turbo, you could get 600hp from a half V8 weight engine. You have more than enough power( you dial in the turbo pressure till the bottom end falls out or the pistons burn),(Think Indy and Offenhouser) and the weight is half that of a cast iron V8. You use the hp when needed, but have a 4 banger when not as much power is needed. They are using a similar principle today with the V8's that cut off 4 cyl when coasting and light loads, but all 8 when accelerating. Just putting ethanol in a gas engine isn't the best way to do it, but building an ethanol only engine increases the efficency and makes the BTU argument moot. Engines today have been greatly improved considering the 87 octane we have to work with, but an ethanol engine would make you a true believer if you ever drove one. It would be like the "good old days" of Hemi's and muscle cars.
The reason, as I have mentioned before on several threads, we don't do this isn't so much from the oil companies( even though they won't be happy), but the gubmint is afraid we will take a swig without paying the tax. They get literally billions from alcohol taxes. You might also make your own without paying the road tax( more billions). That is why we will probably have to settle for E85 as the best we can do. The gas is only needed to poison the ethanol. But the ethanol must be anhydrous ( all water removed), because it will separate in the tank and accumulate to get water in the tank. Otherwise, you can burn 180 proof as easy as 195 proof. The real costs expand just getting the last few percent of H2o from the ethanol. Most stills can get 190 proof with one run if the temp is carefully controlled. Another option would be to poison it with methanol. The greenies would complain about that though( so would I) It's so poisonous, you can't get it on your skin and it doesn't burn as clean as ethanol. You would still have wino's taking a swig though. They drink sterno now. Dukakis wife, Is she still around?