Brazil is running a lot fewer cars than we are - and Brazil has Sugar Cane. That's a huge advantage for making ethanol.

Corn or any grain has to be "malted" and "mashed" first. The grain has to be sprouted to form starch, then the starch has to be treated to make sugar. Then - yeast ferments sugar into alcohol. If you can start out with sugar, like Brazil can, it saves many production steps.

So far as energy efficiency with corn ethanol - they're trying to build an ethanol plant here by Springfield. There's hardly any corn grown in this whole corner of the state, and the ground here is so poor it's not suitable for corn farming.

That means corn would have to be trucked to the plant from hundreds of miles away - and that would mean a net energy loss with any ethanol made there. That's doesn't solve any energy problems, it's just wasteful.