Why are we not manufacturing ethanol or biodeisel in the USA? I am sick of purchasing our fuel from other countries. WAKE UP AMERICA ! We need to make biofuel now not later.

cinza - we do need alternative fuels, but ethanol is not the answer. We are producing ethanol in the USA, there are multiple ethanol plants here in Missouri, and a new plant is under construction in the Metro-East right now. But, the energy required to produce a gallon of ethanol is greather than the energy that gallon of ethanol is capable of producing. In other words, it costs $5 to produce a certain quantity, but that same quantity only yeilds $4 worth of value. The other downside to corn based ethanol is that mass producing corn-ethanal drives up the price of a major food staple. Brazil is producing/using sugar-cane ethanol which is a much more viable plan because it takes less energy to convert cane sugar into fuel grade ethanol. While there may be some use for ethanol, it is limited, and will not significantly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. I don’t know if biodiesel is a more viable solution or not. Maybe someone else can weigh in on that.

I tend to agree with John that ethanol is probably not the most economical alternative to oil-derived gasoline as a fuel. And the best indicator of that is not simply the amount of energy required to get energy in the form of a liquid fuel. If that energy could be obtained from sources such as wind or nuclear and converted to a liquid fuel for use in transportation, the loss of energy in the conversion might be OK. What is really most important is the overall cost of production, which incorporates all sorts of factors including skilled and unskilled human labor.

The best way of developing alternatives to oil-based fuel would be to tax the undesired alternative, i.e., crude oil, and thereby allow market forces to determine the most cost-effective alternatives to it. Now that the price of gasoline has temporarily abated, we could begin phasing-in a tax on oil (and using the revenues to finance the enormous government expenditures related to the financial system bailout). This policy would be coming about 50 years too late, but better late than never.