While it is true, that BTU per BTU that ethanol can’t compete with petroleum in terms of price, there is another consideration.
That consideration is the enormous transfer of wealth and power to the Middle East islamofascists and the huge military costs this imposes on our nation.
Somehow that should be factored into the cost analysis as well.
If a mix of everything like natural gas and ethanol and whatever could get us to the point where we can have access to truly clean coal, then we will go a very long way toward disempowering the middle east despots.
If we were serious about an equal substitute for gasoline that would be sourced from domestic supplies...
...then we’d be converting our coal into gasoline through coal gasification. We have coal in the same abundance as OPEC has oil, so we’d not need to import coal to do this.
The BTUs of the substitute would be equal, as it *IS* gasoline. And we wouldn’t be taking food out of the mouths of the world’s starving. Furthermore, it wouldn’t be draining the Midwest’s aquifer (the aquifer is draining much faster than the rate of replenishment now).
And we wouldn’t be poisoning the Gulf of Mexico with all the fertilizer runoff draining from the Mississippi.
When I check mileage my car (a 2004 model) gets at least fifteen percent lower MPG on ten percent ethanol than it does on straight gasoline. I don’t know just why this is but I know it happens. This means that I am burning MORE gasoline when I use ten percent ethanol and the ethanol is just wasted. How does this reduce oil imports?