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"...potential for algae not included."

"Commercial scale algae production is not included."

Interesting that the government study/report excludes algae: the most promising of all currently available options. Welcome to government studies!

Lets now do a government study on gasoline production but not look at oil as a contributing factor.

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This is based on almost 100% edible feedstock and is not an acceptable solution. Nobody should have to choose between feeding the gas guzzler or the stomach. If all other countries were to make the same mistake, some 20+% of the world would go hungry within 2 or 3 years.

This may look good but it is not a sustainable $500B solution.

Producing ethanol from corn and soybeans is a bad deal. It consumes petroleum, water, raises food prices, and it is not a long term, sustainable solution. But it keeps the agriculture industry/lobby happy, and it makes for a good sound bite for the politicians.

It is a slap in the face to include corn ethanol as a legitimate alternative energy solution. At most, it could be a short term way to decrease oil imports, but not worth it.

The EPA has refused to rule on the ethanol blend wall. Currently the EPA limits all fuel sold (exception of e85) to have a maximum of 10% ethanol. We are about 10% now with only corn ethanol. Nobody in their right mind will invest in cellulosic ethanol if there is no market to sell it. We need E15 and E30 to be approved by the EPA. Otherwise 2nd gen bio fuels are dead.

Gotta love how the Gvmt demands that we make it and then tells us that we are not allowed to use it.

You work with the infrastructure you have, not the one you wish you had.

Algae biofuel production is so complex and capital intensive, it has more similarities to a chemical plant than farming. Algae biofuel production will be done by oil companies, not farmers, who, in general, do not have the megadollar cash flow industrial scale algae production requires.

It appears from the above table that the corn, soybean, wheat, and southern pine belts will be doing the heavy lifting on biofuel production. The rest of the country is virtually irrelevant.

Missing from the discussion on biofuels is the recognition that non-food biomass converted to ethanol production feedstock has been turned into food. Cellulose is, after all, a long-chain polymer of glucose molecules, the sugar our bodies use at the cellular level.

Presently, we primarily depend on annual plants to synthesize nutrients and concentrate them in a seedhead or tuber. Annuals are high maintenance, high disturbance, high fertility demanding plants. Perennials are low maintenance, low fertility plants that outproduce annuals on total biomass. The same technology used to produce biofuel from perennials could be providing us with food, resulting in higher food production with less input on fewer acres.

I also wonder whether the USDA took into account the effect of phenologically induced sterility in perennial grass biomass yields. A winterhardy perennial cultivar, like switchgrass, can be moved far north of its latitude of origin. Since phenology is over 90% correlated with total accumulated heat units, measured in growing-degree days, a southern cultivar will not reach sexual maturity in the north, allowing the plant under the long northern days, to continue vegetative production, resulting in much higher biomass yields.

The LaCrosse may only be FFV in the 3.9l V6. At any rate, there are cars that are FFV, but it is only on some models as an option. We are not going to reduce oil imports much when few cars are FFV and there is no M85 out there.

It is a lot easier and more cost effective to have all new cars FFV than to try and replace 100 million cars in 10 years with EVs. There are dreamers and there are practical people and practical people usually come up with something that works and CAN happen.

If nothing is done, which has been the pattern the last 30 years, in 2020 we will be using 24 million barrels of oil each day, importing 3/4 of it and exporting $700 billion each year for it.

We either go with what will work the next 10 years or say we should all electrify transportation and nothing happens. EVs will be lucky to be 1% of the vehicles on the road the next 10 years. With 100 million FFVs running M85 or M100 with heated fuel injectors, we can reduce oil imports at very little additional cost.

Some would say that would stall the transition to EVs, I do not believe that is true. The false "logic" would say do not do FFVs because we want all EVs, then 10 years from now we have 1% EVs instead of 50% FFVs running methanol. The FFV route will reduce imported oil much more at a much lower cost.

20-30 years from now, lots of things may be possible, but what do we do between now and then? 30 years ago, we had our second oil embargo shock. CAFE was implemented and mileage went up and then nothing much was done between 1985-2005. It was one thing to project what the future will be, it is more accurate to look at what was and then project from there.