I’m sure there are a gazillion answers to this question, some good some bad, but here’s what I want to know. The chief criticism of ethanol is that corn, sugar, switch grass etc simply don’t provide enough energy to efficiently offset the energy it takes to produce them. So why do we rely on existing crops? Biotechnology is creating mice with human genes, fish that glow, rice that cures disease, tomatoes that don’t rot, dogs that meow etc (okay, I made the last one up). So why don’t we create some new super crop that has a higher energy yield? Is it a physics thing? I can see how the energy you get from a crop has to equal the energy you put into it. But if that’s the case, why are some crops better for ethanol than others in the first place? I have hard time believing that the energy inputs to corn are that much greater than the inputs into, say, peanuts. And yet we never hear about peanut-gas. They’ve made pot vastly more potent than it used to be (or so I hear). Why can’t we create uber-corn or some such? Kobayashi maru it baby.

Update: Now we’re thinking outside the box of corn flakes. From a reader:

Jonah, it would be even better if we could genetically engineer a plant
that resembles the venus flytrap but pools liquid ethanol at the plant’s
base as the ethanol is produced and then pours it out the
pitcher-spout-shaped upper part of the plant when touched, like a
flytrap closes up when a fly lands on it.
That would be awesome.