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It depends on the scope of the question. Taken at face value, the answer is yes. It is possible to drive today's "flex-fuel" vehicles entirely on E85, making E85 the vehicle's "primary energy source".

On a broader scale, you have to determine the viability of ethanol for widespread adoption. There have been studies to determine the full-cycle energy tradeoffs in producing and using ethanol as a transport fuel, and the results don't look very good. Certainly not the way it's being produced in the US today, which is from possibly the poorest feedstock imaginable -- corn. There have been two major studies of this process of which I'm aware; one claimed a higher total energy expenditure in producing the ethanol than the energy it ultimately contains -- that's right, you burn more fossil fuel to produce a quantity of ethanol than what you get out of it, so you couldn't, for example, power the whole process with ethanol. The result is that by producing and using ethanol, you've increased the need for coal and imported oil. Another subsequent study indicated a higher output energy content, but not by enough to make the venture worthwhile.

Ethanol today is primarily promoted by ADM, GM marketing, heavily subsidized farmers and politicians. It is finding diminishing favor by anyone who's actually looked at the numbers.

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