Biofuels in the US: today and in the future

Abstract

Corn-grain-based ethanol has the real and viable potential of producing 15 billion gallons of ethanol by 2015, leaving a net of 12.3 billion bushels of corn available for feed, food, and export markets. This is up 3.0 billion bushels from 2006 and 0.9 billion bushels from 2007. With the incorporation of near-term technologies and increased corn production, corn-grain-based ethanol is also well poised to remain the lowest-cost ethanol production per gallon of any significant volume. Continued support and investment in corn-based ethanol technologies will assure that this is possible. These technologies, despite decades of research and investment, remain at early stages of economic viability and, near term, will likely carry significantly higher production costs.