this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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Plant photosynthesis isn't exactly efficient at all: 6% (It's even lower than this maximum!) The industrial-scale corn-to-ethanol is something of a insanity, since agriculture is intensively polluting/destructive and ridiculously water hungry.
Using the same land area and producing hydrogen with solar, and then converting the H2 to hydrocarbons in a industrial complex would probably be way better. (I would like to know some numbers for this...)
Also, some plants actually like growing in shade. So, the solar-panel-fields don't exclude using the land also for growing food simultaneously, if the panel arrays are raised from the ground level and placed a bit more sparsely.
That was kinda the point I was making, needing a ton of land for solar panels to enable a transition away from oil wouldn't be such a bad thing since so much land is used to grow corn for ethanol which...wouldn't really have much demand following such an energy transition
It's apparently weird if somebody agrees with you on the internet?