Both scenarios eliminate the energy balance problem you highlight.
It all revolves around where you draw the lines and pretending that there are equivalent apples to compare in two different processes. Electrification with ramp up of Nuclear, Wind Solar. Then you say if I make ethanol with that oil instead I get gasoline I end up with 1. Again, please accept my sincere apologies for offending you. Alas, there are so many more wrong arguments than right arguments that it is a work of Sisyphus to "challenge all the common arguments". The 100 BTUs of oil has to come from somewhere, it does not appear from thin air. Not only has the path been paved but they're putting up lights.
As a Chem Engr, I am appalled that they are trying to portray those number jumbles as science. If you want them to leave the good stuff in germ, bran etc you have to pay extra. It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
If this is what you got out of this discussion, then you got nothing at all out of it. He says that construction of ethanol plants is all he sees for his foreseeable future. Yes, but not for now, and RR's main point still holds. And I think it is a shame that so many people here are willing to right off ethanol on the basis of this post. Worst of all are those who don't get it, think they do, and proceed to make a fool out of themselves by insulting those who do get it. The emotional arguments against me in this thread underline that. God must either laugh constantly or cry continually. My ultimate goal is to have Jack and Robert come to the middle again as the true heavyweight contenders. And maybe by then we'll be able to burn deuterium which has essentially no resource limitations.
In the future? Maybe, but not now as Wang and others are saying. You see literal barrels, when we are really talking about BTUs. In the first case I refine it to gasoline and end up with 40 BTUs of gasoline. Oil, solar, and wind all benefit from various incentives. This is pretty much what I have been trying to say. If I have to explain for the third time, there is something else going on.