Quote:
Originally Posted by cRiPpLe_rOoStEr
I still take shale with a grain of salt. I'm still more favorable to increase the usage of biofuels in order to add value to agricultural residues and ease the closure of the carbon and nitrogen cycles.
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Sure, I don't know the differences in cost to produce a given quantity of energy, but I'd be more favorable to ethanol if the US could grow cane sugar as easily as Brazil too. Corn is way less efficient, and we get less sunlight.
Has anyone done an analysis on what the cost per unit of energy and potential energy per unit of land is between say, a field full of corn for ethanol, and that same field full of solar panels, or concentrated solar energy?
I know solar is somewhere around 20% efficient, but how efficient is corn at converting sunlight into useful energy, and then how much energy is lost in cultivating and extracting that energy?