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If we converted all of the existing cornfields currently making ethenol to solar farms, ...
edit; fixed link (Technology Connections rant about renewable energy)
Fun point: many farmers are switching from corn and wheat this year to growing soybeans, because soybeans need less fertilizer. Now you can get biofuel from soybeans, but you need to crush and process them first, and it's more expensive and time consuming than corn-based ethanol.
Now you can get biofuel from soybeans, but you need to crush and process them first, and it’s more expensive and time consuming than corn-based ethanol.
For clarity, if you're growing soybeans for biofuel most efficiently, you'd use it as biodiesel. You get much more energy out of it that way. Yes, you could instead take those soybeans crush, process, and ferment them into ethanol, but you get far less energy out only yielding about 25% more energy than it takes to grow the soybeans to begin with, far lower than using soybeans as diesel fuel.
Props for linking the full version instead of the abridged one.
So instead of using the crop fields to feed people, we're gonna grow corn for fuel for cars instead.
Cars are literally more important than feeding people.
Much of our corn fields already go to fueling vehicles even the corn that isn't is more than likely feed corn for livestock. It's not great for human consumption.
Iirc something like a third of food produced in the US ends up in garbage, so it doesn't seem like yall have shortages there.
This. People in relative comfort have no idea what starvation looks like, but are willing to sell out their own country because of some images of people on the middle of a 'food shortage'.
Already doing that
This is the argument they made over 20y ago. It's proven to be completely stupid. We already know that a fraction of the land used for corn could instead be used for solar, and it would power the entire country. Using today's solar technology.
I'm not trying to debunk you, I just like recreational math and blue text
We've planted approximately 95 million acres worth of corn this year. That's about 384,000 square km, for normal people. In 2025, the United States generated 4.43 thousand terawatthours (TWh) of electricity.
Per Wikipedia, the world's largest photovoltaic power station is China's Talatan Solar Park, which generates 18,000 GWh annually. It occupies an area of about 420 square km.
4,430 TWh/18,000 GWh gives us 246.1 Talatan Solar Parks to power the country photovoltaically, occupying a combined area of 103,000 square km, or around a quarter of the total corn area. That's not even very efficient in terms of annual electrical generation per unit land area, and it's a mere fraction of the land we waste on corn
Corn is used for many industrial raw materials, not just ethanol.
If i remember correctly, from way back in college chemistry, i learned E85 is already partially oxidized. So you are getting less energy out of the fuel. It's a step backward, and definitely isn't going to make anything better.
I don't know the specific reasons, but yes, ethanol is less energy dense. The communities talking about this factually see that the loss in MPGs is pretty close to the average price difference, making it a net zero benefit.
If you drive an old car that’s not designed for ethanol it’s gonna fuck up all the seals in the motor.
Even if you drive a new car everything ive heard from actual mechanics is that it causes much more buildup and bullshit in the engine and you end up spending far more in maintenance due to using E85 then you save paying less per gallon for the fuel.
Personally in my step father's flex fuel truck the MPG dropped by like 20% on E85 thus evaporating even more of these "savings".
Ethanol is a trash substitute. We should be going full electric and putting all our money into that, but of course that dont prop up the corn and soybean farmers to keep them voting Republican.
And you still make less power per gallon, and so don’t really save anything. The only think it improves is pre-detonation, which only matters in super high compression or turbo cars (for whom gas money isn’t the problem anyway).
This would be a good time to let people work from home more.
That would be too helpful and threaten the purpose of middle managers.
I'm sure there's a few C level guys who wish they could have owned plantations but will settle for cubicles.
Thats a part of it, but I think the biggest thing is they know that once work from home gets normalized, commercial real estate is going to tank and make what happened in 08 with subprime mortgages look quaint by comparison.
The big time real estate developers dont care about residential property, and more and more Space For Lease signs are showing up everywhere. If work from home becomes the norm they stand to lose a fortune and they will do anything in their power to prevent that.
In my opinion, it's not just commercial that's vulnerable. How may office workers are going to live in San Fransisco or New York if they don't have to?
End the war stupid fucks and vote out MAGA.
They have to wait until the next election. They will forget by then
Dilute, steal profit, repeat?
"Whiskey! Thins out the mix, gives us an extra 50 rpm!"
That’s heavy, doc
Even diesel owners are probably offset by DEF shenanigans lol.
Oh well, DBF!
Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Just makes everything else corn based more expensive. From plastics to animal feed.
This administration is running just like trump runs his businesses into bankruptcy. From taking money from medical services to buy bombs to shuffling corn products around to cheapen fuel it’s all the shallow economics of someone who never pays anything back. All that’s left is for trump to try to borrow money from Russia.
Ethanol isn't as energy dense so it may or may not cost less but it will definitely get less mileage.
It may make fuel cheaper, but it won't lower the price...
Probably not. It will be a subsidy to corn farmers, artificially increase corn prices. Farmers have generally not been having a great time of it under Trump administration policies, so they'll probably be happy about that. Corn consumers, maybe not so much.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/trump-iran-war-farm-crisis-rcna266283
Before the war, roughly a third of the world’s fertilizer ingredients and a fifth of its oil supplies passed every day through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway off Iran’s southern coast. But since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, the strait has been effectively closed by Tehran, leaving scores of tankers stranded.
The strait’s closure has driven up global prices for fertilizer and for the diesel fuel that powers most of America’s heavy agricultural equipment.
The double whammy is hitting farmers just as they head into the spring planting season.
“This is that perfect storm where everything comes together and hammers the farmer,” said Mueller, who also serves as the president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association.
Mueller said his fertilizer supplier was selling a nitrogen fertilizer he needs for $795 per ton on Feb. 22, a few days before the war started. At the end of March, it was $990, Mueller said, a nearly $200 jump in just a few weeks.
Meanwhile, the price he’s paying for diesel has jumped, too. Diesel is now averaging $5.51 nationwide, up from $3.76 right before the war, according to AAA.
Mueller said he got most of the fertilizer he needs for spring before the war — but had to buy some at the higher prices. He’s holding off on purchasing the additional fertilizer he needs for summer, hoping prices will come down.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs have also added to the cost of goods that farmers import from overseas — and frustrated many of the foreign buyers of America’s agricultural products.
“Our government made our life more difficult by walking away from trade deals or instituting tariffs or just basically making our customers angry — our customers being other nations and companies in other nations,” said Mueller.
4$ per gallon? Thats like a bit over 1$ per litre. Which is still ridiculously cheap. In comparison: In germany I pay like 2,20€ per litre for Super...
Not in any meaningful way; that makes it less energy-dense, leading to gas needing to be refilled more often.
from what I understand there are only a few ways to make ethanol that is decently net positive. This was why it was huge in brazil because it works well with sugarcane but that is because the fiber is burnt to provide the energy for the distinllation and such. using corn or sugarbeets is anemic and you use the waste product as animal feed to up its anemic returns. I remember swtich grass being a thing but looking into it it seems like they have not really solved the problems of breakdown.
Not all cars can run e85 let alone e15.
I mean to not handle e15 it has to be from the last millenium. but e85 yeah.
Shitty-shitty Bang-bang