[defenderSD]

Don't forget the energy used to transport the ethanol to blending plants, because it can't be mixed in at large refineries and shipped through pipelines as blended gas. This looks like a completely uneconomical mess to me.

[P-40]

This looks like a completely uneconomical mess to me.

Ethanol will hopefully be a short-lived product as it is by far not the best alternative out there...but the marketing realities call for it to be around awhile. The perfect biofuel would never make it to market if the consumer had to do even the most basic of modification to their vehicle in order to use it.

[iThinkBig]

"Don't forget the energy used to transport the ethanol to blending plants, because it can't be mixed in at large refineries and shipped through pipelines as blended gas. This looks like a completely uneconomical mess to me."

Yes we are a ways off from a viable solution but even at 3.00 a gallon we are better going this route then getting tangled up in the ME every time some crazy dictator pops up. Also, their is a huge benefit to employ high and low level tech employees, the farming industry would boom and we would take advantage of a hundreds of millions of acres of unused land. Ethanol is really only the solution to automobiles, our trucking fleet can run on diesel from soy, easily growable in the south en masse. It's going to take years and we had better get our asses in gear.