alt.energy.renewable

>
> speaking as a foreigner: you americans are doing it wrong. the
> brazilians produce ethanol about 4 times more efficiently they'd sell
> it to you if it weren't for a huge import tarriff. and they're doing
> it by feremntation, which IMHO is not th best way forward in terms of
> fuel from biomass.
>
> this is what happens, I guess, when you hand out big subsidies to
> interest groups: inefficiency and poor solutions.

The Brazilians are using sugar cane not corn.
The corn to ethanol push was a means to make the corn crops more
valuable. It's about politics, not energy logic.
Related food prices have jumped alarmingly in the last year or so,
and so has the cost of filling the gas tank.
All this and not a mention or criticism of the ethanol boondoggle
in the endless political debates and analysis.