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It would require about 31 hectares of corn ethanol to produce the same amount of energy generated by 1 ha of solar panels
(www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2025
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I mean if you think about it, what is a corn field but a really shitty solar panel?
Solar panels dont produce fuel for thermal engines and are intermittent. In the longer term we want electric vehicles and batterie to absorb intermittence but in the short term it has its uses
Yeah, I dont think we'll ever be in a place where we don't want to be producing some combustible fuel. We can electrify a whole lot of things, but it's hard to beat the energy density of stuff you can burn.
To be fair, cornfields consume resources other than solar energy. Like CO2. However the benefits of consuming CO2 goes away if you're just gonna burn the corn, which releases CO2 again.
Which is why I said "shitty" solar panel specifically!
Also the costs of planting corn, protecting it, the emissions from equipment used to harvest, transport, and manufacture, and the amount of water needed to make it all happen, it's extremely inefficient. Solar panels are just there. It's not always simple to set them up, and the up front cost might be high, but the long-term benefit far outweighs the cost of corn.