The equipment is expensive and is inevitably idle most of the year because it has to process a crop quickly, since sorghum, whose stem juice is anywhere from 12% to 20% sugar, spoils quickly.
The way utilities now meet demand spikes is to attach an extra natural-gas-fired generator or two to the grid and let it sit idle for most of the year.
Farmers can also add carbon-rich compost to the soil, and plant "cover crops" such as rye or vetch during parts of the year when land otherwise would lie idle.
Unfortunately for their hypothesis, not only are we are at the end of a thirty-year period of deregulation and falling taxes, but the private sector already has plenty of idle workers and capacity.