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Besides we can still use that same land for crops with agrivoltaics
You couldn't come up with a less efficient form of solar power if you tried. It's there to subsidize US farmers.
brazil produces more biofuel iirc
That may be. But as a percentage of farm income, the prices that corn (and soybeans to an extent) demands is driven by biofuel mandates within the US. If the only market was food and export, those prices would be substantially lower.
They've also cut down a lot of rain forests to do it.
no, the rainforests cut go majority to cattle ranching
Both statements can be true.
Biofuels are a scam. They get worse mileage, it takes as much energy to make as it produces, the pollution is worse, it leads to toxic chemicals from the agriculture being introduced into the environment, and it raises the price of food.
Instructions unclear, re-invaded Poland.
O kurwa, znowu to samo.
"they were invited" german tour guide in family guy
The big enemy is transportation. You can put biofuel in a container and it will keep for a very long time. It's easy to ship anywhere you'd like in large quantities. It can be pumped around using pipelines, it can be put in ships, boats and fuel trucks and brought to just about anywhere. Even places that don't have permanent infrastructure can often easily be reached by truck and transport a huge amount of energy in one go. Those fuels are very energy dense, so transport is easy and cheap and it doesn't lose any energy from being transported.
With electric energy transport is much harder, you need large transformer stations to get it up to high voltages and then you need fixed infrastructure to transport it anywhere. And on the receiving side you'd also need large stations to be able to use the energy and distribute it further. And every step loses energy, the conversion up to high voltage, the transport over the powerlines and then the conversion back down. Reaching places that don't have fixed infrastructure is much harder, as we don't have very good storage options for electrical energy. Best we can do is chemical storage in the form of large and heavy batteries that aren't as energy dense as biofuel.
However solar has a trick up it's sleeve where it's super easy to generate the energy where you need it, reducing the need for transport. Different from other power generation options you don't need a whole lot to generate some energy. For a lot of homes simply putting solar panels on the roof is enough to generate a lot of power for the home itself and an electrical car. Putting solar in places we need energy is the trick to a sustainable future (although we need to fix some issues with solar, but it's pretty good as it is). Having a bit of biofuel as an alternative can be pretty handy though and is better than fossil fuels for sure.
I disagree , electricity transportation is superior to fossil fuel transportation. 40% of all oceanic shipping traffic is for fossil fuels, which consumes more energy. Plus all of the land based fossil fuel shipping. Investing in grid infrastructure makes the grid more resilient to disasters and distributes energy more directly and efficiently than by vehicle or pipeline. Plus the benefits of less congested shipping, rail, and road routes, less air pollution, and less noise pollution for sea life.
I think people forget that if we build enough solar, we'll have such an energy surplus that it'll be essentially free to electrify stuff and use that energy.
Losses from transformation and transmission go away as soon as the resource is unlimited.
This is exactly right. Like it or not, an easily transportable, easily stored energy source is hugely important to modern society.
Can 75% or more of average road traffic be addressed through electric cars and induction roadways? Absolutely. And we should keep going with the conversion so that high energy density needs like construction mining, large-scale transportation, etc. have access to remaining petroleum fuels. On top of getting diesel-fueled plants out of the power grid.
This isn't even hard. Does the vehicle need a CDL to drive? No? Then make it electric. Do you need special tests, licenses, and insurance to drive the vehicle? Does it weigh over 3 tons? Great, use that diesel all you like. No, your Ford F-350 SuperDuty does not entitle you to roll coal just to drive to and from your job at Bass Pro Shop, Dale.
No, your Ford F-350 SuperDuty does not entitle you to roll coal just to drive to and from your job at Bass Pro Shop, Dale.
I think if we just tax vehicles at the rate they destroy the road, we'd quickly see folks stop having giant vehicles. Set the standard as a bicycle (and be unreasonable about the weight, so 25kg), and then use the lovely X^4 function to determine how much to tax.
A bicycle (and let's just say the average person is 100kg, and added to the bicycle's weight, to be unreasonable again) costs $0.50 to register... while the f350 (found a weight for the lightest around 6000 lbs, or 2721.5kg) should be about $0.50 * (2721.5kg/125kg)^4 = $112347.47. I think that would do just fine. Maybe we could adjust down a little, so the bike could be $0.05, and the truck $11234.75.
"very long time" here is like, 6 months to a year. Fuel does break down, a sad reality that anyone who has tried to start a lawn mower in the spring after letting it sit full of fuel all winter can tell you.
But! That is quite a bit longer than electricity, which needs to be used pretty much immediately or it'll start blowing up transformers.
Logistics is the primary issue. We can't generate power anywhere it needs to be pretty close to where it's being used. Unless we want to ship giant fucking batteries all over the place which in some circumstances might not be a bad idea. Not ideal though. Still, if we're putting biofuel on a truck, it's worth considering. I'm not sure the energy to weight ratio of 80,000 pounds of batteries to 80,000 pounds of fuel is.
That said, we can build these things to make energy transmission possible over long distances. Shit if we're making enough excess energy from solar alone we could beam it across the sky with microwaves if we really wanted to. The barrier here is not that it is hard. The barrier here is that liquid fuel is still so goddamn profitable there's no incentive to switch.
Here's a whole article on agrovoltaics. IIRC, they require less water because of the shade. https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/northwest/topic/agrivoltaics-pairing-solar-power-and-agriculture-northwest
Archive because who knows what they'll do next: https://archive.is/n4jF8
Turns out turning sunlight into food and then burning it is very inefficient, who could have guessed /s
It's not an inefficient way to turn political donations into federal subsidies though, and that's the real point of it. It's horribly inefficient, worse pollution, worse mileage, takes as much energy to make as they get from it, leads to overuse of chemicals that get everywhere, and raises food prices.
None of that matters a whit, because it turns donations to lawmakers into huge subsidies to agribusiness, the majority of which get claimed by the few remaining gatekeeping conglomerates in the agricultural sector.
How about putting that farmland back to producing food, and covering all our rooftops and carparks with solar panels?
Its even more efficient. In Poland we have that project, where food is grown under solar panels - they harvest even more than before, because panels protect plants from too much sun.
I second this, if you design your solar panels well, not only do you get to outpu a lot of electricity, yiu actually increase your crop/cattle etc yield
Please. I used to live in RI and driving through ri and ma you will regularly see ACRE upon ACRE of woodland mowed down, flattened, and thousanda of gaudy panels put up in what was once public lands and wooded areas. They do this right outside of the Worcester city limits like they don't have acre upon ACRE of already developed paved over areas that could benefit from shade from solar panels(think car parks, strap mall and dept store building roofs, residential roofs etc). I'm all for solar but I hate when they destroy nature for no reason. I'm not stupid I know it's easier to build them on a level earth than on rooftops but we only have so much land available as it is why not be more efficient with the land we have already used?
It was a metaphor, no one is thinking of replacing farmland with solar panels.
And this whole thread ignores inclement weather. A few years ago Texas had 35MW of solar panels destroyed in minutes by hail. Hurricanes and tornadoes will do the same thing.
It was a metaphor, no one is thinking of replacing farmland with solar panels.
Fair point. It's just the idea of using perfectly good farmland to fuel cars feels like a fucked up priority to me.
you could drive 70 times as many miles in a solar-powered electric car as you could in one running on biofuels from the same amount of land.
that and biofuels only land could produce the same as existing global electricity demand are bigger takeaways.
Article undersells the 7000twh of existing car+truck energy. With just 75% efficiency for solar panel to EV wheel, just 2366twh of solar would replace the ICE twh to wheel equivalent fuel consumption. So, the land conversion formula allows for 10x the number of cars and trucks. Even H2 electrolysis would permit 7x the number of cars and trucks (ensuring lighter trucks/cars as well) from biofuels land.
Oil refining uses an insane amount of energy.
An electric car could travel 60km (or more) on the electricity used to refine enough fuel to drive 100km.
Now do lithium mine externalities.
Again, our proposal isn’t that we should cover all of this land in solar panels, or that it could easily power the world on its own. We don’t account for the fact that we’d need energy storage and other options to make sure that power is available where and when it’s needed (not just when the sun is shining). We’re just trying to get a sense of perspective for how much electricity could be produced by using that land in more efficient ways.
What about the required raw materials to fabricate the solar panels? What about aging and recyclability percentage?
I don't say, abandon solar power. I say: improve the recycling rate of the panels. Dual use agricultural land, maybe try to take advantage of the panel's properties (shadows cast by the panels, wind erosion idk).
And maybe don't overspend on the world's energy budget. Evaluate where cars for personal transportation are really needed and how the fuel efficiency could be raised.
Mass transportation complemented by rental bikes and scooters - it's mostly an infrastructural change, which leads to reduced fuel consumption.
Car sharing: One could aim to increase the frequency of use per vehicle - less cars to build, less space required for parking lots and streets.
Sometimes a web conference instead of a lengthy journey is sufficient. Home office - Maybe commuting 3 of 5 days is enough?
The possibilities are endless. Don't focus too much on one aspect.
There are so many places we could install solar before we even have to touch agriculture.
Rooftop solar is expensive for a lot of people unfortunately because it's paid by the household installing them (government subsidies help, but even if gvt is paying 50% of your 20k solar install, 10k is still a lot of money). But there's ways for businesses and municipalities to install solar.
Without getting into reducing car dependency (which is also important), I maintain that every car park of any significant size should have solar. We're going electric anyway, this makes the EV chargers slightly cheaper to operate (and when nobody is charging, should make some money back) and there'd be shade in the summer, as well as slight protection from snow in the winter. Everyone wins. The owner of the solar, the people parking, etc.
Mandating rooftop solar on all non-historic government buildings at any level of government would also be helpful. I'm sure there could be countries already doing it - I'm advocating for more countries to start doing it.
Also for businesses and communities to install solar, there's crowdfinancing apps to get loans. Goparity has a bunch of solar projects. I've contributed negligible sums to a few, figuring that it might be a riskier investment than say index funds, but at the very least I'm contributing to something good happening to the planet I live on. There are other alternatives too, that's just the one I'm using.
Unfortunate that the person that made this article shot themself in the back of the head 3 times with a long range rifle.
While that is technically true, that is not the best use for that land, nor is it a good way to setup solar.
It would probably use less water too. Crops require a lot of water, and biofuel crops more than most. I've heard it's putting a massive drain on the available water in some places.
But what would happen to the sunlight? Y’all are just trying to kill the sun!!!