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>>>Corn-derived renewable energy sources create more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels,

But corn-derived renewables aren’t the crop pegged for the long term source. Last weekend the History Channel ran several Modern Marvel episodes back to back on renewable energy tech, including this subject. For example at peak efficiency the corn yields only 13 energy units for every 10 put into the crop and processing. The sugar cane used in Brazil yields about 16 for 10 which isn’t much better. Instead there is some weed crop that is closer to 2 to 1, and much simpler to farm and process.

I wonder how this affects the calculations for this study. Either way the corn ethanol is no bargain adding in the food price hikes from taking crops out of the food market.

"Instead there is some weed crop that is closer to 2 to 1, and much simpler to farm and process."

Would that have been switchgrass by any chance? I've been hearing about that lately.

The other thing that people need to know is that a gallon of ethanol does not produce the same amount of BTU's as a gallon of regular gasoline. In fact it is quite a bit less. I don't have the numbers handy, but if I remember "ballpark figures" it was about 111,000 BTU's/gal of ethanol, vs. 160,000 BTU's/gal for regular unleaded gas. Whatever the exact numbers are, the point is that it takes more ethanol to produce the same amount of work.

I did a comparison in my work truck. I ran ethanol (10%) gas for one month and tracked my milage carefully. I then ran regular unleaded for a month and compared. I got on average 2.5 mpg less with the ethanol than the regular gas. With the 34 gallon tank on my truck that works to over 80 miles less distance on a tank of gas if I use ethanol. I don't use it unless I have to.

Read an article somewhere yesterday that said it takes one gallon of fossil fuel to produce 1.2 gallons of ethanol. But if various grasses, like sawgrass, prairie grasses were used as bio-mass, that same 1 gallon of petrol could produce 5 gallons of diesel. Using corn as fuel also requires fertilizers, and a huge amount of water that these various grasses do not require. Also, the grasses will grow very well in areas that just can’t support the growing of corn. The article stated that farmers would just mow it like hay, and then let it regrow and mow it again. Seems to me that this is where the technology should be developed. Not corn (food) for fuel!