The nation is filling up with “ethanol from grain” refineries that are filing bankrupcty.
Renew Energy
Central Illinois Energy
Verasun
E3 Biofuels
Under the most optimistic assumptions, including using irrigation to grow grain, ethanonal returns only slightly more energy than the energy that was needed to make it (fertilizer, running tractors in the spring, harvesters in the fall, trucking the grain to the refinery. Conventional gasoline/oil pipelines cannot transport ethanol, so it must either be trucked half way across the country, or shipped via rail (and few of the specialized rail cars exist).
Intensive production of corn is itself releasing more CO2 as more land is cleared to grow crops, farm runoff is expanding the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, non-renewable topsoil is being consumed and washed away, and the country’s nonrenewable underground aquifers are being depleted for irrigation. Irrigating for 20-40 years always leads to salinity of the soil high enough that no crops will grow on the land. This was a really bad idea, funded by ADM and with no science behind it.
Ethanol from sugar cane or biomass may have some role in the future, as they offer substantially higher net returns on energy inputs .
If you’re still unconvinced with ethanol from grain is a bad idea, did you know that ethanol plants are large generators of Co2?