I am a liberal, and I have a confession to make: I don’t like it when the government throws my money away, either. It’s hard to admit, but it’s just another one of those inconvenient truths. It’s also exactly what I think is happening with the at least $5 billion in ethanol subsidies the federal government will hand out this year.

Now don’t get me wrong: it’s not farm subsidies and certainly not alternative fuel subsidies that I have a problem with. I just think that the government should encourage farmers to grow (organic and sustainable) food, not fuel. It should also support those alternative fuels and technologies that provide a demonstrable measure of increased efficiency and decreased reliance on fossil fuels. Ethanol does neither.

You may recall hearing about a report by UC Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad Patzek and Cornell ecology professor David Pimentel that concluded that it takes more energy to make ethanol than the finished ethanol actually contains:

The two scientists calculated all the fuel inputs for ethanol production—from the diesel fuel for the tractor planting the corn, to the fertilizer put in the field, to the energy needed at the processing plant—and found that ethanol is a net energy-loser. According to their calculations, ethanol contains about 76,000 BTUs per gallon, but producing that ethanol from corn takes about 98,000 BTUs.

Those 98,000 BTUs of energy? They come mostly from fossil fuels. I’ll freely admit that the results and biases of the Pimentel/Patzek report have been the subject of much debate and consternation from ethanol supporters, but it’s clear that producing ethanol from corn requires lots of energy. Even with the American Coalition for Ethanol’s best case estimates, it still takes a half gallon of fossil fuel to make a gallon of ethanol.

It’s one reason why you’ll have to forgive me for choosing not to get too giddy when American automakers start mass-producing vehicles that get 10 miles per ethanol gallon.

There are other reasons too. First, with a still-growing population, with poverty and malnutrition still a global problem, and with the unpredictable results of global climate change, do we really want to devote an increasing amount of productive farmland to growing fuel? Pimentel has aptly called government support of ethanol “subsidized food burning.” If we do allow food and fuel to fight over farm acreage, we would also have to be prepared to accept the unsustainable industrialized farming of corn monocultures (in the U.S.) that would be required for ethanol to make a dent in America’s fuel demands.

As a biodiesel homebrewer, I have many of the same concerns about large-scale biofuel production (and subsidies, too). The vegetable oil I use for biodiesel has already served it’s purpose as fryer oil at a local restaurant. I take that waste product and turn it into fuel. Using virgin oil fresh from America’s farms makes little sense to me. Even so, and even though I use some really gross, inedible waste oil, my wife and I are still planning to move beyond biodiesel and build an all-electric car later this year that will be fueled by solar energy.

With all of that said, I am still hopeful about the possibilities of the next generation of ethanol. There have been some promising advances in producing ethanol (bioethanol) from agricultural wastes, not virgin crops. These advances are indeed exciting and certainly worthy of being pursued further. Using waste to produce ethanol “would allow agricultural land to be used more efficiently and at the same time prevent competition with food supplies.” (And just as bioethanol may be a solution for a more rational ethanol future, algae oil may prove to be the biofuel answer.)

Ethanol can play a role in America’s clean, independent energy future, but it’s important to remember that it’s just one (small?) piece of the puzzle. Many of the best minds in the environmental movement have been telling us for decades that there is no one perfect answer. I think they’re right. We don’t need ethanol alone, or biofuels alone, or solar panels alone, or wind farms alone, or hydrogen alone, or conservation alone. We need all of them and more.

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