shakran

This actually helps to make my point about the ethanol industry. You're right in that sugar cane has a FAR greater energy yield than corn when used to make ethanol. This is obvious to anyone who understands that ethanol is made from the sugars of whatever you use as a raw material. Not hard to comprehend that pure sugar is going to yield more sugar than corn, which just has sugars in it.

The fact that the ethanol industry in the US is using corn indicates that it's not at all interested in cheap or efficient energy. It's all about kickbacks to the farmers. By the way, do some research into who owns the ethanol plants, especially in the midwest. Nearly every plant has a group of farmers who, if they don't own it outright, are major shareholders in the plant.

That's not to say that sugarcane (or sugarbeet, that works too) ethanol is good for the environment. It's not. Increased sugarcane production means you need more fields and since sugarcane grows in the tropics, you make those fields by removing big chunks of the rainforest. That opens up a whole other environmental can of worms in an ecosystem that's been threatened for decades - it does NOT need another cash-cow crop to encourage farmers to cut down the rainforest.

And then there's the potential economic impact of converting food crops to fuel use. That's going to raise the market prices of the food crops, which means some time in the future we could end up with a cheaper fuel, but far more expensive food.