Verified answer

pro...it's priced cheaper....for now

con...well there's too many, but here's a few

much lower gas mileage, much shorter engine/oil life, more expensive to produce, uses more fuel to produce than it produces, increases food price by taking land out of food production, etc.

note* i am not anti alternative fuels/energy sources, etc....i think they are a great thing and we should invest in developing the technology to make it efficient, affordable, and mass produced. for these reasons (and more) is why i'm anti- having it "shoved down our throats" and being force to jump the gun on using these technologies that are not ready.

however, as an example, until we can build a semi-truck that can pull the same as the ones we have now, with gas that is cheaper, less expensive to produce, and the trucks will last...we should stop incorporating them into our lives and work on the "final product".

Sugar, corn and soya beans can be used to produce ethanol and biodiesel for energy but they are not advisable as human beings come first. The world is facing with an explosion and within the next 10 years the human beings will multiply be three foes and as such where are the food going to go to? Obviously under the United Nation acts human is the first priority. As far as I know, Brazil is using sugar and corn to produce ethanol and biodiesel with their vast piece of land. Brazil uses to plant sugar and as a result all animals are dying out. In Malaysia and Indonesia, they plant palm oils as a feedback for biodiesel but palm oil is eatable as margarines and other consumables items. I would advice America to scout their own oil from the gulf of Mexico and other states. For the use of ethanol and biodiesel, they should look for other none eatable plants such as elephant grass and money plants or algae from the river and the sea to convert them into energy to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

Corporate interests are not in favor of them being implemented, ergo they create a wide variety of impediments and obstructions including raking up fear-mongering that gets people believing that food prices are going up due to ethanol.

They aren't.

Also, we get sloppy math like that above figure. It's been debunked. See what that number relies upon is the amount of "Fossil Fuels" used on an acre of corn, and assumes that all of the product of that acre goes to Ethanol.

It doesn't. A lot of it goes to feeding cattle. Other parts go to bagasse, which can be burned to make power of various kinds.

One big drawback with the way we farm now in the US is it would take 1.5 gals of fuel to produce one gallon of either of these. Also, if we take good farm land to produce the feedstock for these fuels, we are not able to produce food on those same lands.