Actually, I think your view is the revisionist one. I have lived my entire life in big corn country, and I can tell you that without question, ethanol production was billed as an energy play. Note that the blending standard for ethanol in gasoline requires nearly twice the ethanol required as a direct replacement for MTBE as an oxygenate. This is to guarantee a market for ethanol produced from corn.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but I just watched that video and it supports what the original commenter stated.
The bill introduced many things, some efficiency regulations and investments in new tech were aimed at climate change. When he introduces ethanol, he specifically calls out diversification of energy supplies and reduction of imports and not carbon.
I agree. I can't speak to how this was marketed/pitched at a national level, but in my (midwestern) state it was a huge deal so even as a kid I paid attention to it.
I don't remember much of a climate pitch at all. Everyone immediately pointed out that it cost more energy than it produced. The pitch to the public where I lived at the time was national security (energy independence), and of course the demand it would generate for the local corn industry.
There was probably some greenwashing of it going on, but I certainly don't recall much.
How can that be? Are you including the solar energy? Well, in that case, every process out there has a less than 100% efficiency, so the claim may be true, but also vacuous.
If you don't include the solar energy, then are you saying that all the energy used to make the fertilizers, to plow the fields, then harvest them, then brew the corn and distill it, is less than the energy content of the ethanol produced? I heard this type of argument before, but I find it really difficult to believe. For example the study [1] claims you need 140 gallons of fossil fuel to plant/harvest/process one acre of corn that will produce 328 gallons of ethanol. Ethanol is less energy dense than crude oil (30 MJ/kg vs 42), but overall, 328 gallons of ethanol has about 67% more energy than 140 gallons of crude.
Yes, but wikipedia provides zero evidence for the number. If you follow the link (7), you'll see they only talk about the EROI for oil and gas. The claim about the 1.5:1 EROI for ethanol is unsubstantiated. In any case, my back of the envelope was 1.67:1, which is not that far. Saying that 1.5:1, or even 1.67:1 is pathetic is one thing, saying that you put more energy into getting ethanol than you get out is still quite the wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSlNzgvogxk