Why the hell would you want to make more ethanol? It’s already poisoning the gas, wrecking engines, and causing havoc. Burn coal and natural gas for power, dummy, don’t make ethanol out of it.
The point is that he can do it with existing chemical processes and plants, and do it for $1.50 a gallon.
Or use coal or natural gas to make synthetic fuel. The Fischer Tropf process can make synthetic fuel at about 40 dollars per barrel. That is less than the 100+$ per barrel we see today. The problem is once FT process comes on line, the usual producers have an incentive and a price point, and will produce until the price is below that for FT.
The government should then buy fuel for the strategic reserve, creating additional demand to keep the FT process viable. When prices go up, the government should sell fuel from the strategic reserve to keep producers from making money from their cartel, and making money from the strategic reserve. Some thought can be put into how much strategic reserve oil can be sold at various prices.