What greens are proposing is a new paradigm, pairing aggressive energy efficiency and conservation (easily the cheapest "source" of energy) with distributed small-scale sources appropriate to regional context, and smart grids.Very easily and quickly do-able ... that is once you overcome the energy lobby and governmental resistance ....
I'm a very lucky person with every allergy known to man but still happy to be enjoying a wonderful life living in the best place in the world!
"Ethanol can be made through the fermentation of many natural substances, but sugar cane offers advantages over others, like corn. For each unit of energy expended to turn cane into ethanol, 8.3 times as much energy is created, compared with a maximum of 1.3 times for corn, according to scientists at the Center for Sugarcane Technology here and other Brazilian research institutes."
If the U.S. could get sugar cane type yields from crops able to be grown here, then it might be part of solving the problem. But the other issue is capacity. Brazil's energy needs are a small fraction of the U.S. Not sure we have enough land to grow enough energy. And while alcohol burns cleaner, I suspect it still releases co2.
But I'd sure be interested to learn more.