Following Brazil's dramatic success in utilizing sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) for large-scale ethanol production, and with a growing interest in energy crops worldwide, sugarcane breeders have been charged with genetically improving cane as an energy crop. We conducted a survey of sugarcane breeders in some 20 countries to ascertain how they envisioned “energy cane” as contrasted with sugarcane; breeding approaches and germplasm they are using to genetically improve energy cane; challenges associated with simultaneous genetic improvement of energy cane and sugarcane; and progress they have made toward the development of dedicated energy cane cultivars. The responses were highly diverse. They show that working definitions of energy cane vary widely, and that breeding approaches used to genetically improve it, and relative success toward the development of distinctive energy cane cultivars have often been more greatly influenced by environmental, social, and political considerations, than by biological considerations, per se.