It takes a lot of energy to create ethanol. In addition to the energy consumed by the plant itself, energy is consumed to grow the corn. The diesel fuel to power a tractor for a few passes over the fields and the combine and maybe a sprayer is obvious. But there are other energy consumption issues such as the plant and oil stock that makes the fertilizer and the rail and truck diesel fuel needed to ship that fertilizer.
This article indicates that initially ethanol consumed more energy than it provided. Now the most efficient plants produce four times the energy they consume.
Part of that efficiency is to build the plants near the farms that grow their special corn and near the livestock farms that consume their dried distillers grain. In fact
other farmers want a plant built in their area so that they do not have to pay railroads to export their crop or to import feed stock. Actually, it is probably more the unreliability than cost of the rail service that they want to avoid.
The article did not mention another improvement of
co-locating a carbon dioxide plant to recover (monetize) the CO2 waste.
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