Brazil uses sugar cane for its ethanol production. From what I read, for ever 1 unit of fossil fuel energy that goes into producing sugar cane ethanol, the Brazilians get 8 units of ethanol energy out. Sounds like a pretty fair exchange to me.

By comparison, 1 unit of fossil fuel energy going into producing ethanol from corn gets 1.6 units of ethanol energy out.

This according to a National Geographic article a year or two ago.

I'd be interested to see the figures with sugar beets. I'm guessing they have more chemical energy in them than corn does.

How will it affect the cost of sugar? Beats me. All the stuff you see in bags at the store these days claim to be "pure cane", so I'm guessing it is not made from beets, but beet sugar probably goes into processed food. As I understand it, import tariffs on sugar currently are a fair portion of the price of sugar that Americans pay. This helps our sugar farmers stay in business, but forces the rest of us to pay higher prices for sugar. If more sugar is produced domestically for either consumption or ethanol/gasoline production, the market price of sugar would have to go up quite a bit before it will start affecting consumers because our price is currently determined by the import tariff.

Whether railroads would want the business is open to debate. It seems that sugar harvesting keeps utterly ancient railroad equipment around where it is done. US railfans remember the SP beet trains, but in Cuba and Java, steam engines are still fired up for the sugar cane harvest, since it is not worth investing in new equipment that will be used one or two months per year and sitting idle the rest of the year.