Specifically, it will have to be either
bagasse, the sugar cane waste left over from processing, or else high-cellulose grasses of whichever type grow fastest. Back to simple, independently duplicable chemistry everyone, please.
Ethanol can be a useful solution, but corn-based (indeed, any high-starch based) ethanol not only cannot be part of the solution, but will be, now and forevermore, only implemented by very high levels of taxpayer (NOT gov't!) subsidy, no matter how often ADM and that crowd say otherwise.
"In the long run...it can't be corn as the top ingredient for Ethanol. It'll have to be sugar cane...and in this case...there will be limits where you can grow huge amounts of the stuff. It takes too much energy to convert corn...alot less for sugar cane."
In Brazil over 40% of their automotive fuel needs are satisfied with ethanol. They use sugar cane and in fact burn the stalks and other waste from the cane as fuel for distilling and take care of their electricity needs with ethanol powered generators. The ethanol plants there already sell electricity on the power grids and still make nice profits and supply billions of gallons of ethanol. Brazil no longer has to buy foreign oil. Corn is not nearly as good as sugar cane for producing ethanol, but actually from what I have read the crop that will produce the highest number of gallons of ethanol per acre is sugar beets. I'm not sure why those aren't used more. There has to be some reason. Maybe it's just lobbying from the corn belt. I don't know.