How green are biofuels? Scientists are at loggerheads

"Biofuels" - let's call it what it is - Corn and sugar processed into a liquid oil-like substance to be used as a fossil fuel substitute. And boy do these plant products provide energy - just barely more than the fossil fuel energy required to till, plant, fertilize, harvest, process, and get them to market in the first place!

Insane. The energy return on energy invested (EROEI) is dangerously close to 1:1. It would be completely infeasible at a large scale without massive subsidies.

Fracking has been heavily criticized from the environmental perspective, for good reason. Fracking is also criticized from the economic perspective; despite years of speculative investment it's still not profitable. But from an energy perspective, at least it provides well above 2 BTU for every BTU put into its production. (4:1 is a reasonable estimate). In other words, we're not literally wasting our energy as we are with biofuels.

Beyond just the the abysmal EROEI for biofuels, just consider the opportunity cost of lost crop production, lost wildlands and associated ecosystem services, and the existential cost of intensifying agricultural practices dependent on industrial inputs.

There might be a small-scale role for biofuels in certain geographies. Certainly where waste of another existing process can easily be converted with little energy input. But subsidizing biofuels and/or mandating their use at any meaningful scale is seriously fraught.