Ethanol fuel is ethanol(ethyl alcohol), the same type of alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. It is most often used as a motor fuel, mainly as a biofuel additive for gasoline. World ethanol production for transport fuel tripled between 2000 and 2007 from 17 billion to more than 52 billion litres. From 2007 to 2008, the share of ethanol in global gasoline type fuel use increased from 3.7% to 5.4%. In 2009 worldwide ethanol fuel production reached 19.5 billion gallons (73.9 billion liters).

Ethanol is widely used in Brazil and in the United States, and together both countries were responsible for 89 percent of the world's ethanol fuel production in 2009. Most cars on the road today in the U.S. can run on blends of up to 10% ethanol, and the use of 10% ethanol gasoline is mandated in some U.S. states and cities. Since 1976 the Brazilian government has made it mandatory to blend ethanol with gasoline, and since 2007 the legal blend is around 25% ethanol and 75% gasoline(E25). In addition, by late 2009 Brazil had a fleet of more than 9 million flexible fuel vehicles regularly using pure ethanol fuel (known as E100).

By James B. Meigs
Published in the February 2008 issue

The idea is so appealing: We can reduce our dependence on oil—stop sending U.S. dollars to corrupt petro-dictators, stop spewing megatons of carbon into the atmos¬phere—by replacing it with clean, home-grown, all-American corn. It sounds too good to be true.

Sadly, it is...

Archer Daniels Midland, Big Corn and The Ethanol Hoax
by Walter Williams (March 12, 2008)

One of the many mandates of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for oil companies to increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. President Bush said, during his 2006 State of the Union address, "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." Let's look at some of the "wonders" of ethanol as a replacement for gasoline.

Ethanol contains water that distillation cannot remove. As such, it can cause major damage to automobile engines not specifically designed to burn ethanol. The water content of ethanol also risks pipeline corrosion and thus must be shipped by truck, rail car or barge. These shipping methods are far more expensive than pipelines.

Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers -- all of which are fuel-using activities. And, it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent.

Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax -- one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone.

There's something else wrong with this picture. If Congress and President Bush say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, then why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil? Brazilian ethanol, by the way, is produced from sugar cane and is far more energy efficient, cleaner and cheaper to produce.

Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

It's easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money. The top leader in the ethanol hoax is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the country's largest producer of ethanol. Ethanol producers and the farm lobby have pressured farm state congressmen into believing that it would be political suicide if they didn't support subsidized ethanol production. That's the stick. Campaign contributions play the role of the carrot.

The ethanol hoax is a good example of a problem economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there's a large benefit for them -- higher wages and profits. The millions of gasoline consumers, who fund the benefits through higher fuel and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout. After all, who do you think a politician will invite into his congressional or White House office to have a heart-to-heart -- you or an Archer Daniels Midlands executive?


Born in Philadelphia in 1936, Walter E. Williams holds a bachelor's degree in economics from California State University (1965) and a master's degree (1967) and doctorate (1972) in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.

By TOM ELAM*

*Dr. Thomas E. Elam is president of FarmEcon.com.

THERE has been a significant amount of press about grain-based ethanol and its pros and cons. Here are 10 interesting facts about U.S. grain-based ethanol production:

(1) Replacing a gallon of gasoline requires about 1.5 gal. of ethanol. To replace current U.S. gasoline consumption of 140 billion gallons per year, it would take 210 billion gallons of ethanol.

(2) A gallon of ethanol requires the use of about 0.35 bu. of corn. Equated to gasoline's energy content (ethanol has 66% of the energy of gasoline), each gallon of gasoline replaced takes about 0.54 bu. of corn. Replacing the entire U.S. gasoline supply with corn-based ethanol would require 75.6 billion bushels of corn, or 1.92 billion metric tons.

(3) According to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture study, each gallon of ethanol produced results in a net gain in energy of only 34%. That is, it takes the fossil fuel energy of 0.66 Btu to produce 1.00 Btu of ethanol. Of the total energy used, each Btu of ethanol produced requires 0.16 Btu of petroleum-based liquid fuels. Burning fossil fuels to produce ethanol almost eliminates the purported reduction in human carbon dioxide output that ethanol producers claim.

(4) U.S. ethanol production is making almost no difference in the global energy supply. The net energy gain from 2007 U.S. ethanol production equates to the energy of about 1.6 billion gallons (38 million barrels of 42 gal. each) of gasoline. That equates to about three days of Saudi Arabian oil production, 1.1% of U.S. gasoline consumption or 0.5% of total U.S. crude oil use.

On a global scale, about 31 billion barrels of crude oil are produced per year. On a net energy basis, U.S. ethanol production equates to just 0.12% of global crude oil production and a substantially lower percentage of total fossil fuel energy production.

(5) The 51 cents/gal. minimum federal subsidy for ethanol blended with gasoline increases ethanol producers' ability to pay for corn by about $1.40/bu. above what they could pay without the subsidy. Additional state, local and federal subsidies effectively boost the price premium ethanol producers can pay for corn above this minimum level of $1.40...

December 18, 2007, 4:35 PM
Ethanol and the Energy Bill
By RICHARD S. CHANG
The House just passed the latest and not-so-greatest version of the energy bill, which passed in the Senate last week after some major revisions; the President is expected to sign on Wednesday. So far, much of the talk has centered on the higher fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. But lost in the dialogue are measures to increase ethanol production by a huge amount.

How huge? Try 36 billion gallons a year by 2022. That’s five times current production levels. According to this article in today’s Times:

No fuel of the type in question has been produced commercially in the United States. Even in the view of people who back the idea, the technology to do it is immature, the economics are uncertain, and the potential for unintended consequences is high.

Hundreds of new factories will be required, perhaps a billion tons of plant material will need to be hauled around every year, and estimates of the required investment start at tens of billions of dollars.

“It’s not clear that it is doable, but it wasn’t clear you could send a man to the moon, either,” said Mark Flannery, head of energy equity research at Credit Suisse. “You don’t know until you try.” (Continued at link above)

Executive Summary

The Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers. Thanks to federal protection of the domestic sugar industry, ethanol subsidies, subsidized grain exports, and various other programs, ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM's annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM's corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30

One of the most politically charged debates in Washington revolves around business subsidies known as "corporate welfare." A number of policy organizations have published studies examining the corporate welfare phenomenon: what qualifies as corporate welfare, how much it costs taxpayers, and how much it damages the economy. This study examines the dynamics of corporate welfare somewhat differently by investigating ADM as a classic case study of how those subsidies are obtained, how the welfare state encourages such "rent seeking," and how such practices fundamentally corrupt the political life of a nation. Congress's expressed desire to foster a free marketplace cannot be taken seriously until ADM's corporate hand is removed from the federal till.

Ethanol can be produced from a variety of feedstocks such as sugar cane, bagasse, miscanthus, sugar beet, sorghum, grain sorghum, switchgrass, barley, hemp, kenaf, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, sunflower, fruit, molasses, corn, stover, grain, wheat, straw, cotton, other biomass, as well as many types of cellulose waste and harvestings, whichever has the best well-to-wheel assessment.

An alternative process to produce bio-ethanol from algae is being developed by the company Algenol. Rather than grow din mor algae and then harvest and ferment it the algae grow in sunlight and produce ethanol directly which is removed without killing the algae. It is claimed the process can produce 6000 gallons per acre per year compared with 400 gallons for corn production.

Currently, the first generation processes for the production of ethanol from corn use only a small part of the corn plant: the corn kernels are taken from the corn plant and only the starch, which represents about 50% of the dry kernel mass, is transformed into ethanol. Two types of second generation processes are under development. The first type uses enzymes and yeast to convert the plant cellulose into ethanol while the second type uses pyrolysis to convert the whole plant to either a liquid bio-oil or a syngas. Second generation processes can also be used with plants such as grasses, wood or agricultural waste material such as straw.

Cellulosic ethanol is a biofuel produced from wood, grasses, or the non-edible parts of plants.

It is a type of biofuel produced from lignocellulose, a structural material that comprises much of the mass of plants. Lignocellulose is composed mainly of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. Corn stover, switchgrass, miscanthus, woodchips and the byproducts of lawn and tree maintenance are some of the more popular cellulosic materials for ethanol production. Production of ethanol from lignocellulose has the advantage of abundant and diverse raw material compared to sources like corn and cane sugars, but requires a greater amount of processing to make the sugar monomers available to the microorganisms that are typically used to produce ethanol by fermentation.

Switchgrass and Miscanthus are the major biomass materials being studied today, due to their high productivity per acre. Cellulose, however, is contained in nearly every natural, free-growing plant, tree, and bush, in meadows, forests, and fields all over the world without agricultural effort or cost needed to make it grow.

According to U.S. Department of Energy studies conducted by Argonne National Laboratory of the University of Chicago, one of the benefits of cellulosic ethanol is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 85% over reformulated gasoline. By contrast, starch ethanol (e.g., from corn), which most frequently uses natural gas to provide energy for the process, may not reduce GHG emissions at all depending on how the starch-based feedstock is produced

The first attempt at commercializing a process for ethanol from wood was done in Germany in 1898. It involved the use of dilute acid to hydrolyze the cellulose to glucose, and was able to produce 7.6 liters of ethanol per 100 kg of wood waste (18 gal per ton). The Germans soon developed an industrial process optimized for yields of around 50 gallons per ton of biomass. This process soon found its way to the United States, culminating in two commercial plants operating in the southeast during World War I. These plants used what was called "the American Process" — a one-stage dilute sulfuric acid hydrolysis. Though the yields were half that of the original German process (25 gallons of ethanol per ton versus 50), the throughput of the American process was much higher. A drop in lumber production forced the plants to close shortly after the end of World War I. In the meantime, a small, but steady amount of research on dilute acid hydrolysis continued at the USFS's Forest Products Laboratory.During World War II, the US again turned to cellulosic ethanol, this time for conversion to butanediol to produce synthetic rubber. The Vulcan Copper and Supply Company was contracted to construct and operate a plant to convert sawdust into ethanol. The plant was based on modifications to the original German Scholler process as developed by the Forest Products Laboratory. This plant achieved an ethanol yield of 50 gal/dry ton but was still not profitable and was closed after the war.

With the rapid development of enzyme technologies in the last 2 decades, the acid hydrolysis process has gradually been replaced by enzymatic hydrolysis. However, chemical pretreatment of the feedstock is required to prehydrolyze (separate) hemicellulose for robust enzymatic saccharification of cellulose substrate. The dilute acid pretreatment is developed based on the early work on acid hydrolysis of wood at the USFS's Forest Products Laboratory. Recently, the Forest Products Laboratory together with the University of Wisconsin–Madison developed the Sulfite Pretreatment to overcome Recalcitrance of Lignocellulose (SPORL) for robust enzymatic hydrolysis of wood cellulose.

United States President Bush, in his State of the Union address delivered January 31, 2006, proposed to expand the use of cellulosic ethanol. In his State of the Union Address on January 23, 2007, President Bush announced a proposed mandate for 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017. It is widely recognized that the maximum production of ethanol from corn starch is 15 billion gallons per year, implying a proposed mandate for production of some 20 billion gallons per year of cellulosic ethanol by 2017. Bush's proposed plan includes $2 billion funding (from 2007-2017?) for cellulosic ethanol plants, with an additional $1.6 billion (from 2007-2017?) announced by the USDA on January 27, 2007.

In March 2007, the US government awarded $385 million in grants aimed at jump-starting ethanol production from nontraditional sources like wood chips, switchgrass and citrus peels. Half of the six projects chosen will use thermo-chemical methods and half will use cellulosic ethanol methods.

The American company Range Fuels announced in July 2007 that it was awarded a construction permit from the state of Georgia to build the first commercial-scale 100-million-gallon-per-year cellulosic ethanol plant in the United States. Construction began in November, 2007.

The U.S. could potentially produce 1.3 billion dry tons of cellulosic biomass per year, which has the energy content of four billion barrels of crude oil. This translates to 65% of American oil consumption.

Ethanol can be produced from any feedstock that contains plentiful natural sugars or starch that can be readily converted to sugar. Popular feedstocks include sugar cane (Brazil), sugar beets (Europe), and maize/corn (United States). Ethanol is produced by fermenting sugars. Corn grain is processed to remove the sugar in wet and dry mills (by crushing, soaking, and/or chemical treatment), the sugar is fermented, and the resulting mix is distilled and purified to obtain anhydrous ethanol. Major byproducts from the ethanol production process include dried distillers’ grains and solubles (DDGS), which can be used as animal feed. On a smaller scale, corn gluten meal, gluten feed, corn oil, CO2, and sweeteners are also byproducts of the ethanol production process used in the United States.

With additional processing, plants and other biomass residues (including urban wood waste, forestry residue, paper and pulp liquors, and agricultural residue) can be processed into fermentable sugars. Such potentially low-cost resources could be exploited to yield significant quantities of fuel-quality ethanol, generically termed “cellulosic ethanol.” Cellulose and hemicellulose in biomass can be broken down into fermentable sugars by either acid or enzymatic hydrolysis. The main byproduct, lignin, can be burned for steam or power generation. Alternatively, biomass can be converted to synthesis gas (hydrogen and carbon monoxide) and made into ethanol by the Fischer-Tropsch process or by using specialized microbes.

Currently, no large-scale cellulosic ethanol production facilities are operating or under construction. EPACT2005 provides financial incentives that in the AEO2007 reference case are projected to bring the first cellulosic ethanol production facilities on line between 2010 and 2015, with a total capacity of 250 million gallons per year. Cellulosic ethanol currently is not cost-competitive with gasoline or corn-based ethanol, but considerable R&D by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and its partners has significantly reduced the estimated cost of enzyme production. Although technological breakthroughs are inherently unpredictable, further significant successes in R&D could make cellulosic ethanol a viable economic option for expanded ethanol production in the future.

Conventional ethanol and cellulosic ethanol are the same product, but are produced utilizing different feedstocks and processes. Conventional ethanol is derived from grains such as corn and wheat or soybeans. Corn, the predominant feedstock, is converted to ethanol in either a dry or wet milling process. In dry milling operations, liquefied corn starch is produced by heating corn meal with water and enzymes. A second enzyme converts the liquefied starch to sugars, which are fermented by yeast into ethanol and carbon dioxide. Wet milling operations separate the fiber, germ (oil), and protein from the starch before it is fermented into ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol can be produced from a wide variety of cellulosic biomass feedstocks including agricultural plant wastes (corn stover, cereal straws, sugarcane bagasse), plant wastes from industrial processes (sawdust, paper pulp) and energy crops grown specifically for fuel production, such as switchgrass. Cellulosic biomass is composed of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, with smaller amounts of proteins, lipids (fats, waxes and oils) and ash. Roughly, two-thirds of the dry mass of cellulosic materials are present as cellulose and hemicellulose. Lignin makes up the bulk of the remaining dry mass.

As with grains, processing cellulosic biomass aims to extract fermentable sugars from the feedstock. But the sugars in cellulose and hemicellulose are locked in complex carbohydrates called polysaccharides (long chains of monosaccharides or simple sugars). Separating these complex polymeric structures into fermentable sugars is essential to the efficient and economic production of cellulosic ethanol.

Two processing options are employed to produce fermentable sugars from cellulosic biomass. One approach utilizes acid hydrolysis to break down the complex carbohydrates into simple sugars. An alternative method, enzymatic hydrolysis, utilizes pretreatment processes to first reduce the size of the material to make it more accessible to hydrolysis. Once pretreated, enzymes are employed to convert the cellulosic biomass to fermentable sugars. The final step involves microbial fermentation yielding ethanol and carbon dioxide.

Grain based ethanol utilizes fossil fuels to produce heat during the conversion process, generating substantial greenhouse gas emissions. Cellulosic ethanol production substitutes biomass for fossil fuels, changing the emissions calculations, according to Michael Wang of Argonne National Laboratories. Wang has created a "Well to Wheel" (WTW) life cycle analysis model to calculate greenhouse gas emissions produced by fuels in internal combustion engines. Life cycle analyses look at the environmental impact of a product from its inception to the end of its useful life.

"The WTW model for cellulosic ethanol showed greenhouse gas emission reductions of about 80% [over gasoline]," said Wang. "Corn ethanol showed 20 to 30% reductions." Cellulosic ethanol's favorable profile stems from using lignin, a biomass by-product of the conversion operation, to fuel the process. "Lignin is a renewable fuel with no net greenhouse gas emissions," explains Wang. "Greenhouse gases produced by the combustion of biomass are offset by the CO2 absorbed by the biomass as it grows."

Feedstock sources and supplies are another important factor differentiating the two types of ethanol. Agricultural wastes are a largely untapped resource. This low cost feedstock is more abundant and contains greater potential energy than simple starches and sugars. Currently, agricultural residues are plowed back into the soil, composted, burned or disposed in landfills. As an added benefit, collection and sale of crop residues offer farmers a new source of income from existing acreage.

Industrial wastes and municipal solid waste (MSW) can also be used to produce ethanol. Lee Lynd, an engineering professor at Dartmouth, has been working with the Gorham Paper Mill to convert paper sludge to ethanol. "Paper sludge is a waste material that goes into landfills at a cost of $80/dry ton," says Lynd. "This is genuinely a negative cost feedstock. And it is already pretreated, eliminating a step in the conversion process."

Masada Oxynol is planning a facility in Middletown, New York, to process MSW into ethanol. After recovering recyclables, acid hydrolysis will be employed to convert the cellulosic materials into sugars. "The facility will provide both economic and environmental value," explains David Webster, Executive Vice President of Masada. From an environmental standpoint, the process reduces or eliminates the landfilling of wastes. By-products of the process include gypsum, lignin and fly ash. "Under normal operations, enough lignin will be recovered to make the plant self-sufficient in energy," notes Webster.

Perennial grasses, such as switchgrass, and other forage crops are promising feedstocks for ethanol production. "Environmentally switchgrass has some large benefits and the potential for productivity increases," says John Sheehan of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The perennial grass has a deep root system, anchoring soils to prevent erosion and helping to build soil fertility. "As a native species, switchgrass is better adapted to our climate and soils," adds Nathanael Criers, NRDC Senior Policy Analyst. "It uses water efficiently, does not need a lot of fertilizers or pesticides and absorbs both more efficiently."

Two of the cellulosic biofuels industry’s most urgent problems (which are stalling its launch) are the lack of access to investment capital and the high capital costs for innovators. These are not new or unique problems. As new technology moves from research and development (R&D) to commercialization, it is often challenging to find private financial support for realizing the technology’s potential. This phenomenon is often referred to as the “valley of death” because the technology, in a state of being neither here nor there, is highly vulnerable. The capital requirements for early commercialization are often beyond the scope of high-risk R&D funding, while the economics of the commercialized technology are not well enough proven to attract conventional financing (Ford, Koutsky, and Spiwak 2007). It is well known, moreover, that lingering too long in this valley of death can do more than delay the scale-up of the technology. The failure of pioneer companies to get off the ground can discourage subsequent investment and cool the enthusiasm of policy makers to continue supporting what is perceived to be a failed technology.

Complicating matters for the cellulosic biofuels industry, it found itself entering the valley of death just as a perfect storm arrived. Turbulence in the financial markets in 2008 and 2009, volatility of transportation fuel prices, and uncertainty over public policy put cellulosic biofuels technology at great risk of losing momentum before a successful transition from R&D to cost-effective commercialization could occur.

Successive administrations from both political parties have placed strong emphasis on alternative transportation fuels in general and on the potential of cellulosic biofuels in particular analysis showed capital costs for cellulosic ethanol dropping almost 30 percent between 2009 and 2012 (DOE 2009a).10 Such rapid reduction in capital costs per gallon is expected as the technology matures, practitioners gain experience, and yields improve.

The arguments in favor of cellulosic ethanol as a replacement for gasoline in cars and trucks are compelling. Cellulosic ethanol will reduce our dependence on imported oil, increase our energy security and reduce our trade deficit. Rural economies will benefit in the form of increased incomes and jobs. Growing energy crops and harvesting agricultural residuals are projected to increase the value of farm crops, potentially eliminating the need for some agricultural subsidies. Finally, cellulosic ethanol provides positive environmental benefits in the form of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

There is a growing consensus on the steps needed for biofuels to succeed: increased spending on R&D in conversion and processing technologies, funding for demonstration projects and joint investment or other incentives to spur commercialization. "If you do not do all three of these pieces, the effort is likely to stall," said Greene. "The challenge is to be really focused and make the commitment to make biofuels a part of our economy. We need to make these technologies work."

There is also agreement on one of the main factors impeding the development of biofuels - inadequate government funding. "We are grossly under investing in this area," says Dechton. "We are piddling along at 30 or 40 million dollars per year. This is a national security issue." Sheehan agrees, adding "the other problem is over the last several years Congressional earmarking has been horrendous. It is splintering critical resources, as a result effectiveness is way down. We do not have well aligned, consistently directed R&D effort."

The "Growing Energy" report calls for $2 billion in funding for cellulosic biofuels over the next ten years, with $1.1 billion directed at research, development and demonstration projects and the remaining $800 million slated for the deployment of biorefineries. Other advocated subsidies and incentives for the industry include production tax credits, bond insurance for feedstock sellers and biofuels purchasers and efficacy insurance. "We would like to see private insurance but lacking private sector involvement, government should offer the insurance," said Greene. "The idea has two features, the amount of money available goes down over time, so by 2015 the industry is ready to stand on its own two feet and, second the dollars available to developers is in a menu format. We will let them pick subsidies that work best for their product."

Given sufficient investment in research, development, demonstration and deployment, the report projects biorefineries producing cellulosic ethanol at a cost leaving the plant between $.59-$.91 per gallon by 2015. The price range is dependent upon plant scale and efficiency factors. At these prices, biofuels would be competitive with the wholesale price of gasoline.

In the past, discussions regarding ethanol as a potential replacement for gasoline have centered on the availability of suitable land in addition to a feed versus fuel debate. Technological and process advances coupled with the promise of biorefineries are allowing us to refocus the debate. Scenarios exist where well directed public policies emphasizing biofuels investment and incentives in addition to fuel efficiency could promote a transition to cellulosic ethanol. Given the right policy choices, America's farmers could one day be filling both our refrigerators and our gas tanks.