Miscanthus

Miscanthus is a type of grass that can be used to make ethanol.  The good news is that Miscanthus is much, much more efficient than corn, so we'd be able to make ethanol from this grass rather than using food, like corn, to make fuel.  The bad news is that the world has a limited supply of cropland and the more we use for fuel, the less we use for food.  the more grass we grow, the less food we grow.

"What we've found with Miscanthus is that the amount of biomass generated each year would allow us to produce about 2 1/2 times the amount of ethanol we can produce per acre of corn..."