I sometimes have to pause and remind people that I am not anti-ethanol. I think I first made that clear over two years ago with my support for E3 Biofuels' attempt to produce corn ethanol in a more sustainable fashion. They were attempting to create a closed-loop system that minimized fossil fuel inputs into the process, but they ultimately went bankrupt (the move toward sustainability isn't cheap). But politics being what they are, corn ethanol is not going away. So I do appreciate it when efforts are made to push the process toward higher sustainability. I believe corn ethanol can be sustainably produced, but probably not on a massive scale. It will also take a radical shift away from the way most corn ethanol is produced today.

What I want to focus on in this essay is one particularly compelling argument for ethanol as a fuel, and to address some common misconceptions. Ethanol has a high octane rating (103), which means it does not easily pre-ignite. This has the potential to translate into higher fuel efficiencies than can be obtained with gasoline – despite ethanol's BTU deficit versus gasoline.