Apply those comments to yourself first. Your initial claim of liquid energy 10/1 was to a comment that didn't limit the energy comparison to only the portion that makes ethanol look good.
the rest is coal-etc, that cost pennies.
And Natural Gas (directly as well as electricity) and nuclear and other resource they are not giving away. Pennies, well lots and lots of pennies.
If the process is so cheap and great, why does it take government mandates and subsidies?
Making ethanol is so profitable, thanks to government subsidies and continued high oil prices, that plants are proliferating throughout the Corn Belt. Iowa, the nation's top corn-producing state, is projected to have so many ethanol plants by 2008 it could easily find itself importing corn in order to feed them.
But that depends on the Invisible Hand. Making ethanol is profitable when oil is costly and corn is cheap. And the 51 cent-a-gallon federal subsidy doesn't hurt. But oil prices are off from last year's peaks and corn has doubled in price over the past year, thanks mostly to demand from ethanol producers.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070310/ethanol_q_a.html?.v=2
Consumers will soon feel the effects of high corn prices as well, if they haven't already, because virtually everything Americans put in their mouths starts as corn.
Demand for corn driving up meat prices
The Columbus Dispatch Friday, March 9, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Strong demand for corn from ethanol plants is driving up the cost of livestock and will raise prices for beef, pork and chicken, the Agriculture Department said Friday.
The cost of feeding chickens has gone up 40 percent, according to the National Chicken Council. http://www.columbusdispatch.com/news-story.php?story=251975