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TL;DR:
[...] it would require about 31 hectares of corn ethanol to produce the same amount of energy generated by one hectare of land covered in solar panels.
The hero we all need. TY!!
"Just give me 40 hectares and a mule."
Which is why any handwringing about "food not solar" is an entirely artificial grassroots campaign by the fossil fuel industry and right wing interests. We should transfer our ethanol corn fields to solar asap.
artificial grassroots campaign
Astroturfing
Thanks, brain was failing on the term.
Fuck ethanol and biofuels. They're a scam on several different levels, but it is especially horrible how much farmland they waste with it for absolutely no redeeming value. It's not scalable or sustainable and it never was, it's just a way to greenwash fossil fuels so they don't look so bad and so that as long as they keep pumping it out of the ground they can use ethanol to pretend you're getting "green fuel" despite all the petroleum products used to make it and all the petroleum products it gets mixed with. The only good thing about ethanol is that it is really good at making small seasonal engines unreliable and maintenance prone, which makes electric equipment much more attractive in comparison. Score one for the good guys I guess, and score about 20 for the fossil fuel industry because that's mainly who ethanol benefits.
This reminds me a lot of Technology Connection's video about renewable energy where he brings up pretty much the same point.
But people can't really eat volts. At least not directly.
You don't need to replace ALL corn farms, just those that are currently grew for ethanol production.
We grow 12 million hectares purely for ethanol to put in cars.