U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline, study finds
As others mentioned, this is not a new finding.  There is a lot of academic and industrial/economic analysis on this subject.  Ethanol from corn was never a good idea economically for anyone other than corn farmers.  It is also bad environmentally and places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply).<p>Similar analysis has been done on other crop feed-stocks (switch grass, etc.) and none of the analysis has shown that crop derived ethanol is a good idea.<p>I'm not a leading expert on this subject by any means, but I am a PhD chemical engineer and did  a lot of research into alternative fuels science and economics about ten years ago.  I'm not up on the latest research and analysis but the fundamental thermodynamics and carbon cycles of crop-based ethanol have not changed much in the past ten years or so.