Biofuels: the US could switch to electric cars and solar power on just a fraction of the land

Hannah Ritchie · 5 Sept 2023 · hannahritchie.substack.com ↗

5 korrents from this piece

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Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Biofuels have probably raised greenhouse gas emissions rather than lowered them, once the land they take is counted.

Their wordsThey estimate that biofuels have increased emissions, not decreased them.

Interesting
Our reading
Biofuels cannot supply enough energy to matter for a country like Britain or to replace all transport fuels.

Their wordsThe US uses a UK-sized amount of land to grow biofuels.4 In return, it accounts for around 10% of the country’s motor gasoline supply.

Interesting
Our reading
An acre of solar panels powering electric cars carries you orders of magnitude further than an acre of crops grown for fuel.

Their wordsYou can drive about 150 times as far from a solar-powered electric car compared to using corn bioethanol.

Interesting
Our reading
We worry about the land solar needs while ignoring how wastefully the world already uses its farmland.

Their wordsWhile we fret over the amount of land needed for solar, we are often blind to how inefficiently we have used the world’s farmland.

Interesting
Our reading
Growing food to put in cars is a mistake at a moment when the world should be farming less land, not more.

Their wordsThe world’s croplands are still expanding. At a time when we should be using less land for farming, allocating high-quality farmland to grow food that we then put into cars is a mistake.

Interesting