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
They've also cut down a lot of rain forests to do it.
no, the rainforests cut go majority to cattle ranching
Both statements can be true.
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.
worry not brazil, also gives subsidies to the ethanol industry here, in part because we want to more independent of oil imports
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.
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
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.
How about putting that farmland back to producing food, and covering all our rooftops and carparks with solar panels?
There is already an over production of food. We don't need to grow more food.
I don't know about that, but we certainly need to waste less food, and removing the profit motive from it's production might help getting it to the people that need it but can't get it. There are still people in the world starving needlessly.
We both grow more than we need, and throw more than we should away.
Some of that is a result of picky shoppers wanting unblemished produce. Some of that is a result of not having an ~~easy~~ profit motivated way of getting produce from where it's grown to where it's most desperately needed.
We have tropical fruit available all year, but when impoverished peoples experience a crop failure, best we can do is send powdered milk.
Which incidentally may have cured them of lactose intolerance.
People are starving because capitalists would rather throw away perfectly good food and put bleach on it than give it to the starving to maximize their profits
That's why I said removing the profit motive would be a good 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.
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.
It was a metaphor, no one is thinking of replacing farmland with solar panels.
Fair point. It's just the idea of using perfectly good farmland to fuel cars feels like a fucked up priority to me.
Hurricanes and Tornados can, and do, do the same to refineries too.
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
While that is technically true, that is not the best use for that land, nor is it a good way to setup solar.
Instructions unclear, re-invaded Poland.
"they were invited" german tour guide in family guy
But what would happen to the sunlight? Y’all are just trying to kill the sun!!!
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.
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.
The big enemy is transportation. You can put biofuel in a container and it will keep for a very long time. It's easy to ship anywhere you'd like in large quantities. It can be pumped around using pipelines, it can be put in ships, boats and fuel trucks and brought to just about anywhere. Even places that don't have permanent infrastructure can often easily be reached by truck and transport a huge amount of energy in one go. Those fuels are very energy dense, so transport is easy and cheap and it doesn't lose any energy from being transported.
With electric energy transport is much harder, you need large transformer stations to get it up to high voltages and then you need fixed infrastructure to transport it anywhere. And on the receiving side you'd also need large stations to be able to use the energy and distribute it further. And every step loses energy, the conversion up to high voltage, the transport over the powerlines and then the conversion back down. Reaching places that don't have fixed infrastructure is much harder, as we don't have very good storage options for electrical energy. Best we can do is chemical storage in the form of large and heavy batteries that aren't as energy dense as biofuel.
However solar has a trick up it's sleeve where it's super easy to generate the energy where you need it, reducing the need for transport. Different from other power generation options you don't need a whole lot to generate some energy. For a lot of homes simply putting solar panels on the roof is enough to generate a lot of power for the home itself and an electrical car. Putting solar in places we need energy is the trick to a sustainable future (although we need to fix some issues with solar, but it's pretty good as it is). Having a bit of biofuel as an alternative can be pretty handy though and is better than fossil fuels for sure.
I disagree , electricity transportation is superior to fossil fuel transportation. 40% of all oceanic shipping traffic is for fossil fuels, which consumes more energy. Plus all of the land based fossil fuel shipping. Investing in grid infrastructure makes the grid more resilient to disasters and distributes energy more directly and efficiently than by vehicle or pipeline. Plus the benefits of less congested shipping, rail, and road routes, less air pollution, and less noise pollution for sea life.
Turns out turning sunlight into food and then burning it is very inefficient, who could have guessed /s
It's not an inefficient way to turn political donations into federal subsidies though, and that's the real point of it. It's horribly inefficient, worse pollution, worse mileage, takes as much energy to make as they get from it, leads to overuse of chemicals that get everywhere, and raises food prices.
None of that matters a whit, because it turns donations to lawmakers into huge subsidies to agribusiness, the majority of which get claimed by the few remaining gatekeeping conglomerates in the agricultural sector.