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What a fantastic way to describe gas vs #solar electric for transportation. “If you grow an acre of corn, it will produce 900 gallons of ethanol, which will get you about 25,000 miles for a Ford F-150 pickup,” says Carson. “Which is, not bad I guess. But let’s say we put solar on that same acre. It will produce enough electricity every year to drive my Lightning 550,000 miles.” The entire article is here https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/forty-acres-and-a-sense-of-hope 10 comments
@zazzoo The article talks about land use as well. Of course, that usually means building single family houses but it also discusses using land that performs poorly as farm land (in which case, they would probably get less than 25,000 miles of ethanol). You can do both. For example running sheep under solar panels helps both improve the soil and gives you improved wool yeild. Crops grown under solar panels can give better yeilds as moisture in the soil doesn't dry out as much in the shade  @human3500 not to mention fuel ethanol from corn literally requires more fossil fuel input for farm equipment and fertilizer and whatnot, than the output of fuel you get in the end. It just exists as a mechanism to absorb government subsidies. @dragonfrog @human3500 I think if you were going to make biofuel the most efficient way possible corn wouldn't be how you did it. @geekylou @dragonfrog Quite possibly true. From what i recall from the article, growing corn for ethanol was the previous purpose of the land hence the comparison. |
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@human3500 Also you could still produce food since solar doesn't have to be installed on prime agriculture land.