Ethanol blues

FT notes that the ethanol boom is drying up. This is a subject this blog has visited previously.

Ethanol from corn was always a costly, inefficient idea. Corn as a commodity is terribly skewed in the United States by corn-related (and more recently, ethanol) subsidies. The "corn lobby" has successfully prevented more-efficient, cheaper biofuels from Brazillian sugar cane to be imported, for example (see also this comparison).