You are right on all of your points but most of your suggestions have allready been tryed and none of them are cost effective with cheap natural gas. The studies showing how much fossil fuel it takes to produce ethanol are all very questionable studies and have all been funded by oil companies that are opposed to ethanol. The problem is with the studies not the way plants are producing the ethanol. At one point the oil companies even funded a study that showed it took about 25,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of ethanol. That study did not last too long as it was way to easy to shoot holes in that one. They used all the water that was used to produce a bushel of corn including all the rain that fell on that acre of corn while it was growing. It doesn't seem like there is a way to stop the rain even if you aren't producing corn on those acres so the water is gone weather the corn is there or not.