Ethanol seems to have the best chance of replacing gasoline

ethanol
brazil seems to be in the forefront of using ethanol to power automobiles .
during our recent short stay in brazil we learned that there is a major push on to use the residue of sugarcane - after the sugar liquid has been extracted - to produce ethanol .
we saw many ads advertising cars with "flex-fuel engines" . these cars can run on a variety of ethanol/gasoline mixtures . all the major car brands , general motors , ford ... were advertising these new cars in huge prominent street ads .
when we were in hawaii in 2004 , we were told that electric utilities were in the process of refitting their plants so that they could make use of the plentiful sugarcane . commercial sugarcane production had been discontued some years ealier since sugar produced in hawaii had become too expensive . there were large fields of sugarcane that were left untended . plans are to now bring them back to production . there seems to be plenty of land there .
hbg

see article from the "economist" :

...ETHANOL...

Someone will eventually study the amount of acreage this would take, and the resulting ruination of our farmland, and put the silly idea to rest. It would be nice to hold the world by throat like the arabs and their wannabe club members Hugo and Evo, but I don't think it will happen. What will happen is that the US will eventually wake up, slap down the monosylabic environmentalists, and generate more than half our electricity with nuclear power, as most "progressive" countries do now. At that point we can consider the hydrogen fuel cell and electric powered auto possibilites.

Last time I checked, I was sinning because because I like corn finished beef instead of the grass fed lean (chewy, tasteless) kind. It's different if we rape the same land so I can drive to Sizzler's?

A little consistancy please.

ethanol
the way i understand it , the ethanol is produced from the residue of the sugarcane , the stalks/cellulose . so there would be no additional land use for producing the ethanol . isn't the residue burned now ? i've seen pictures from sugar-plantations which created huge (polluting) fires to burn the stalks . wouldn't it be better to make use of the residue and reduce the use of fossil fuels at the same time ?
there are many other instances where "waste-products" can be put to use rather than being burned or buried . hbg

ethanol
burning of a sugarcane field



why not use the "left-overs" rather than polluting the aair ?
hbg