We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
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.
meaning what
Meaning that in the US biofuels are a very inefficient way of giving corn growers subsidies. That’s why congress has supported various biofuel requirements.
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.
Saddly 75% is still a pipe dream, lucky to get 40% from panel to road. Not that biofuel is not one of if not the worst use of land mind you.
The DC-AC-DC conversion loop does cost 15% or so. LiFePo batteries (better than NMC) 10%, and motor 10-15%. AC grid transmission losses add more.
With home solar, DC charging (hopefully bidirectional), 75%-80% efficiency to the wheel. But sure, AC grid tied charging could drop it by 20%. Still better than 60% losses.
Comparing to ICE engines, its fair to exclude transmission losses (exists in both. about 5%), and there is regen available for EV, and it doesn't idle. My original 75% claim may be too generous, but 3x efficiency of ICE is still fair.
Evs are 75% to 90% efficient from their battery, but the real issue is solar on the grid. Its way more then 20% loss from the grid, hell 40% loss in transmission is normal around here, and that's just last run. The issue is that its loss on every step. I think local solar is the way to go for ev charging but this is clearly about mass deployment and that means the grid.
While that is technically true, that is not the best use for that land, nor is it a good way to setup solar.
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.
All those talking points are courtesy of gas and oil. Any farming means toxic chemicals, ethanols only take energy because renewable sources are not used for distillation, and no farming used for ethanol comes from food crops.
Most of the corn grown in the US is not edible, it is grown to make oils, sugar and plastics. Biofuels are carbon capture, the carbon released from burning is captured in a cycle for growth in the next season. But NY has several PR firms paid millions a years to counter biofuels , but in countries like Brazil where biofuels are common, people prefer E90 because of lower cost and motors lasting longer because of no gasoline burning by-products.
It's unfortunate the arguments are in favor of oil, but they are true, those aren't arguments the oil companies made through their bullshit mercenary scientific outfits, those are from real studies that have been made and reported on by real scientists and do gooders over the decades. And reported in real publications, from newspapers, back when those still existed, to periodicals.
The pesticides and fertilizers from corn are not something to slough off, it's systematic pollution at this point, and they use more and worse chemicals for the stuff that's not for human consumption.
A good share of corn is used to make ethanol, I don't doubt they use the leftovers from that to make plastics, that's exactly the problem it drives food prices up taking away agricultural land by subsidizing inefficient fuel production, started during the Bush Administration by the way, the ultimate whores to big oil.
Corn oil and syrup/sugar, is for human consumption, and included in what we call food. It's also subsidized and driving bad outcomes but that's another story. 5% of the continental united states is corn. 5% of the total land in the lower 48 is devoted to corn. Think about that. There is only one larger crop, grass. Worthless lawns, although Idk if that is measured in land coverage or weight of the product to be honest.
lol okay I get being suspicious of oil and gas bs, but some of what you said about ethanol is just not right...
In the US most ethanol is made from corn. It’s usually field corn, not the kind you eat like corn on the cob, but it’s still part of the food system. It turns into animal feed and all the corn ingredients in processed food, so saying “no ethanol comes from food crops” doesn’t really hold up.
Also yeah you could power the distillation with renewables, cool, but that doesn’t magically fix the bigger issues people point to: growing more corn usually means more fertilizer and more runoff and more land pressure. You know how much fertilizer corn takes?
That’s not just “oil talking points,” that’s just what happens when you scale it... i’m not saying ethanol is pure evil or whatever, but dismissing the criticism as all oil propaganda is doing the same thing in reverse. It's certainly not the climate justice solution they've sold it as.
But what would happen to the sunlight? Y’all are just trying to kill the sun!!!
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
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.
How about putting that farmland back to producing food, and covering all our rooftops and carparks with solar panels?
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.
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?
Farmland installs can be cheaper.
If combined with farming it can protect yields but is more costly, but that's another topic
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.
I hope this is only to put things in perspectives because cars suck for a multitude of other reasons, however we power them.
We can use solar energy to move a box that weighs 1/2 tons around, for every individual on the planet. The cars will still shed microplastics. The cars will still require paved parking lots that are not permeable, worsening floods, and generate heat islands. The cars will still kill one or two billion animals every year. The cars will still kill about a million people worldwide every year; one every 30 seconds.
It would be nice to have this energy used for something else than powering deadly inefficient cars.
It would be nice to have this energy used for something else than powering deadly inefficient cars.
Cars are not the the problem you think they are, there is a lot more dirty emissions from shipping and flying.