Solar panels on land used for biofuels: enough electricity for all cars/trucks | Hacker News Reader

Solar panels on land used for biofuels: enough electricity for all cars/trucks

ourworldindata.org

19 pointsndr428 comments

21GW of Solar for California Land That Can No Longer Be Used for Agriculture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46488648 - January 2026

Ecologically informed solar enables a sustainable energy transition in US croplands - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2501605122 | https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2501605122

New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production. It’s no contest. - https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2025/04/new-study-compa... - April 25th, 2025

Impacts of agrisolar co-location on the food–energy–water nexus and economic security - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01546-4 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01546-4

(~60M acres of land in the US are in production for biofuels via corn and soybeans, arguably unnecessarily)

Really fascinating data. Limitation: "We don’t account for the fact that we’d need energy storage and other options to make sure that power is available where and when it’s needed (not just when the sun is shining). We’re just trying to get a sense of perspective for how much electricity could be produced by using that land in more efficient ways." - fascinating nonetheless.

The land-use and EV vs ICE efficiency compound in:

> ... 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.

The article notes that the EVs have a lot of storage embedded, so the biofuels to EV problem might be considered mostly a transmission issue!

EVs provide a lot of storage, but people tend to drive during the day and charge at night, so it might actually exacerbate the storage issue. Increasing access to charging stations usable during the day such as in employee parking lots helps, but short term storage is definitely going to need to increase.

I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek, but if we stopped fighting one another and built a planet-circling grid (I have ofc made a modest proposal for a US/Europe interconnector including wind generation along its route) then the issue would become transmission from where electricity is being generated to matching (EV) charging demand.

I mean even then the world is pretty boned when the sun is over the Pacific

https://c7.alamy.com/comp/2ACFBN3/pacific-ocean-satellite-im...

You could build some floating megastructures to hold a bunch of solar panels out in the ocean, but making batteries seems a little easier.

Or you could call them interconnectors strung with solar and wind generation.

In any case, if PV is available from somewhere on the globe much of each 24h, and cars are plugged in to recharge then (typical UK cars are parked ~96% of the time), then it's mainly a transmission problem again, maybe?

They lead with climate impact but the three main biofuel producers all pushed this as a way to achieve energy independence and to support farmers.

Of course solar achieves both of those goals better too. It reduces fuel imports (and/or leaves more for export) and provides another "crop" that doesn't have income correlated with other produce.

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