I just feels it takes the pollution less on the responsibility of the end consumer and more on the oil companies producing it. It is still not clearly defined if producing ethanol uses more fossil fuels or not though BUT it is evident the more ethanol produced gains scales of production. That is why brasil is able to produce so much ethanol and not incur this supposed negative energy. Even if the energy balance were negative, the production involves mostly domestic fuels such as natural gas and coal so the need for non-Australian petroleum would be reduced. This means alot of the fuels from middle-east price fixing oil companies would be less valuable because we are using Queensland coal.
I just read this from RAA too:
"Until recently, ethanol was an attractive fuel-extender because it was exempt from fuel excise, giving ethanol a 38cpl tax advantage over petrol. The government now applies a 38cpl tax on to ethanol." Ethanol is not a tax incentive, it is now taxed the same in Australia as petrol.
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