It may not be entirely relevant to the topic, but a few years back when talk about corn ethanol and alternative fuels from things like switchgrass was center stage, I did a back of the envelope calculation to find out how feasible these numbers were. The values are somewhat dated (two or three years) but here goes. If one were to convert the entire annual output of palm oil produced by both Indonesia and Malaysia to biofuel, it would satisfy the US domestic transportation industry for about 22 days or roughly three weeks. And they produce a LOT of palm oil, live in favorable tropical conditions, and grow the stuff like it’s going out of style. Given all that, the US temperate climate, and enormous demand for refined petroleum (gasoline), I see the “growing our way” out of the dependence on good old crude a pipe dream.
Previous assessments by others and a few by myself support this conclusion... we ca’t grow our way out of oil dependence.
For another point of view, my screen background is a depiction of Estimated U.S. Energy Use in 2009, some 95 quads. At that time:
All Biomass, including Ethanol, is 3.88 quads or about 4% of all fuels, is this worth the disruption of ALL the food supply?
57% of all fuels consumed are wasted to heat and other non-productive uses
A 0.002% increase in efficiency of all other fuels would replace ALL the wind and solar now produced
Natural Gas production would have to almost Double to replace petroleum imports