Although ethanol wasn't much of an issue during the campaign, it continues to make for burning controversy in eco circles. As if to fuel those flames, a new study by the Sandia National Laboratory and General Motors finds that the U.S. can produce 90 billion gallons of ethanola year by 2030.

The straightforwardly-titled 90-Billion Gallon Biofuel Deployment Study was commissioned to whether it's feasible to pump out large amounts of non-petrol domestic fuels. Their answer seems to be 'yes.'

In 2030, America is expected to use 180 billion gallons of gasoline annually*. If you think corn ethanol is a green nightmare, you'll be happy to know that most of the alt-fuel (75B gallons) will be nonfood cellulosic.

The study looked at four sources of biofuel materials: agricultural residue, forest residue, dedicated energy crops and short rotation woody crops.

Other interesting conclusions of the study include:

• Cellulosics are cost competitive with $90/barrel oil.
• The energy ratio (comparing production energy to harvested energy) of cellulosic ethanol is 3.8, compared to 0.8 for gasoline.
• CO2 savings for transportation equal 250 million tons for 60B gallons of ethanol, although that figure doesn't include land use changes.

For more, read the Exec Summary (pdf).

* In case you're wondering how 90 billion gallons is 1/3 of 180, 90B of ethanol is energy equivalent to 60 billion gallons  of gas.