If you just want energy, you do not need to create ethanol at all. You can just burn the fiber to generate electricity.

The problem with producing ethanol is if you understand the process to produce alcohol, there is hard liquor like vodka that need distillation and alcohol beverage like beer that do not need distillation.
This is because the microbe that produce the alcohol from sugar die when the alcohol reach ~10%, if you want 40% liquor like vodka you need to distill the water first.

To produce 100% Ethanol, Do you think the 10% alcohol can provide enough energy to vaporize 90% of water? The conclusion is you will use even more energy to produce the alcohol.

The problem is not about the alternative solar energy, fusion energy, hydro energy, geo energy, wind energy, nuclear energy or biomass energy.

The problem is about how to get your so call energy inside the car with the condition that the car performance and cost must be at least the same as petrol car.

So what if u have all the alternative energy in the world. As long as you cannot get those energy inside your car u cannot use it as an alternative to fossil fuel.

You know what, Malaysia already got a surplus of energy.

This post has been edited by locke: Aug 15 2009, 12:37 PM

Peninsular has surplus. East Malaysia has even more surplus compare to peninsular Malaysia. Please read link below, the underwater cable is to supply from East Malaysia to peninsular Malaysia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakun_Hydroelectric_Project

The blackouts are probably caused by the poor grid maintainence since East Malaysia has huge land with hard to access terrain and low population density. Who knows one of the electric pole is knock down by an elephant in the middle of the jungle or something.