• Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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    7 days ago

    Well then it’s a good thing that there’s a lot more than 2000 acres currently being used to grow varieties of corn that aren’t even intended for human consumption but will just be turned into ethanol

    • JATth@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      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.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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        5 days ago

        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

      • howrar@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        This video has been posted so many times in this thread that I’ve inadvertently memorized the video ID.