I think corn based ethanol was only ever intended to be a stepping stone to a functioning ethanol marketplace.

Without ethanol fuel available in pumps, no-one would bother making or buying cars that could burn it.

And putting fuel in the pumps meant tapping into an existing massive agri-infrastructure - corn. It's just the easiest way to make lots of ethanol right off the bat.

It showed up in pumps (E10 almost moreso than E85), and cars were made to use it. Now the transition is supposed to slowly kick in where alternative, non-foodstuff sourced ethanol production arises. There's an active marketplace that's been (artificially) setup, waiting for it. Algae, biomass, switch grass, whatever.

Congress just cut the apron strings on corn ethanol, hopefully not just a little bit too soon, so now the whole ethanol industry will have to find its own economic footing, without a large government subsidy floating it along.

And just to make the situation a little tougher, the end of the subsidy also ended the restrictions on importation of fuel ethanol, so we can now (possibly) start importing some from Brazil (where they fuel most of their fleet on it). Of course, which is worse for the planet, long term - cutting down the rainforest to make ethanol, or diverting some corn to it?

I hope that alternative, non-corn sources have had enough time to get their ducks in a row and come on-line in the near future, and that corn ethanol lingers on long enough to fill in the transition.

I've been running E85 in the turbo wagon for several years now. Not really out of any grand ideas about the environmental aspects of it (and, really, it's the fertilize that make it a wash, not the corn itself, just the freakishly ove-productive varieties of corn they grow now that need freakishly over-fertilized soil). But rather, for the 110 octane. That's race fuel octane levels. You'd generally pay $8 a gallon for 110 octane race gas.

With the Megasquirt ECU on my car I was able to make it easily switchable between gas and E85 (dash switch, just run it low, refill on the other fuel, start, flip the switch). And running on E85 I'm able to feed it more boost, more advanced timing, make more HP. If E85 disappears from the marketplace as a result of the subsidies going away, I'll miss it. And I'll have to do a lot more tuning on my gas maps, they're fairly neglected.
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'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 (now w/16V turbo)