Biofuels and ethanol from Brazil - is this a s***w-up?

Question

I want to give credit to Bush for moving on investment in biofuels to work towards energy independence but I have to quibble about a few things.

First of all, Brazilians make ethanol more efficiently from sugar cane than we do from corn. Bush signed a deal to import ethanol from Brazil. BUT there is a $.45 per gallon tax on imported Brazilian ethanol AND we are subsidizing US farmers to grow corn for ethanol. Isn't this a backwards incentive which promotes the less efficient alternative?

Also, making ethanol from sugar cane, while better than corn, is still pretty inefficient. There is the potential for much more economical (and less carbon utilizing) production from other sources such as cellulose (basically garbage - waste agricultural biproducts and wood chips, recycled paper and cardboard). Did Bush make too hasty a commitment towards ethanol instead of looking more carefully at the existing science on best methods?

Answer 1

Ethanol from corn is bad, especially when that corn can be used to feed the many poor in the world. We need to have more initiatives for solar and wind energy. I heard someone say that wind is bad because of storage problems. My answer to that is, when the wind stops blowing you can worry about that.

Answer 2

I believe the equipment used to plant, harvest, produce, distribute ethanol use more oil based fuel than it yields.

Direct sources of energy are better.  like wind or solar.  It would be better if permanent plants (tree type) could be bioengineered to yield ethanol and collected like maple syrup sap.  although you might have a problem with alcoholic animals hanging around or winos in your field.  weeeee

Answer 3

Ethanol from cellulose is still a long way away.  To date there is no commercially viable process.  The research, which has been going on for some time, appears to be going no where.

If you don't agree, show me where I am wrong.

Answer 4

If the Arab's start to use oil as a weapon u will be glad for all we have.