The killer in ethanol production is the distillation process and the cost to transform the waste products into saleable form. The economic cost of the corn input stock is easy, just divide the market price by 2.7 gallon of ethanol per bushel of corn. I.e. $5.40 / 2.7 = $2.00 corn cost per gallon of ethanol. Figuring the actual energy cost of this portion is much harder. The first reference deals with this problem in a more or less satisfactory way.
The energy required for distillation is discussed in the second reference. These authors are saying that it takes about 85,000 Btu to completely process 1 gallon of ethanol from corn. However, they then add in 50,000 Btu as the value of the saleable byproducts. That leaves 35,000 Btu to cover the production of corn for 1 gallon of ethanol. If we carefully tweak these production methods it can come out to a positive energy balance by a small amount.
But if corn jumps to $8.10 per bushel, the input is $3.00 per gallon of ethanol and the economic balance is completely shot.
The last reference is just for giggles, as I don’t know as if they know what they are talking about.
I am not starting an argument here, only laying out what is known about ethanol. It is a really close call and if corn were $2.00 / bu it would be a no-brainier. Thankfully it is not, but now we are stuck with the stuff and I guess that’s just life!
How Much Energy Does It Take to Make a Gallon of Ethanol? https://www.ethanol.org/pdf/contentmgmt/ILSR_energy_balance.pdf
Energy analysis for ethanol http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/repositoryfiles/ca3406p9-72245.pdf
Ethanol Fuel Production http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/luk1/
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