Hasbeen ethanol is made from fermented sugar and water. Then distilled. They grow crop for its sugar content. First you get a beer then distill it to get ethanol.

Yabby said;
Energy is energy.
Well it isn't necessarily so !

Almost all biofuels such as those from corn, wheat etc have a very low
energy return on energy invested. The best figures are around 8 to 1.
Most are more like 5 to 1 which is not sustainable.
To compare the best oil wells are 100:1 and many these days are 10:1
which is about the point when they cap them.
Then on top of that the ethanol has about 66% of the BTUs of petrol.
So you get less milage.

There is no plant yet which will take any scrap wood, grass, stubble
etc. There are many organisations trying to get one to be economic but
so far not very encouraging. The last figures I saw was 0.7:1 which
means of course you have to put more energy in than you get out.

I have read that fracking is seldom used in coal seam gas wells.
It is always used in shale gas wells. The reason is that coal seams
are already fractured. Can anyone else confirm that ?

RE farming, I tried hard to buy Australian Glazed cherries yesterday
even walking to the other supermarket but could only buy Thai.

*Yabby said;
Energy is energy.
Well it isn't necessarily so !*

Ah but it is Bazz, and it all comes down to price.
If you take a look at the US price for gas, its been
dropping dramatically in the last few years, as supplies
increase dramatically from shale gas.

So if you can convert one form of energy into another,
it all comes down to price and what people are willing
to pay. As they are prepared to pay a premium for
liquid fuels over gas, it makes sense to convert it.

The thing is, if its used to drive cars or people, in
the end its all energy.

Yabby one We are not into cost conversion, just the feasibility.

579, it must be nice to be a greenie & all pie in the sky.

You can believe what ever you like, without having to bother with facts.

Still someone has to.

There is no point in gathering stuff to make a transport fuel, if it costs more transport fuel to gather it, than it produces.

I do note the extreme worry about CO2 production does appear to be diminishing. Otherwise you would have to be against ethanol, as it produces more CO2 in production, than it saves. Of course that's no longer part of feasibility is it.

What ever planet it is your living on, how about an invite, if only for a holiday. It would be really nice to be able to drop rationality for a while, & only wear our rose colored glasses.

No Yabby, you have to remember even if you are getting a small energy
gain it is not enough, you have to cover all the costs as well and
the small energy gain is just not enough.
Even if you are doing it in your backyard at such low gain you are
better off just putting the energy straight into your car.

Thats why they cap wells that are still well above 1:1.

Pepper said:
We owe 189 billion which

Sorry, the government recently had to increase the authorisation for
borrowing from $225 Billion to $250 Billion as they were getting close.