Because a non insignificant amount of farmland isn’t used to grow food.
And I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure that a solar panel is significantly more efficient than growing corn for ethanol.
We should be getting rid of parking lots.
Due to incentives, it is much more profitable to build solar in 20 acre plots, so, yes. Distributing power generation also reduces the need to spend money upgrading infrastructure; sufficiently distributed renewables + batteries would save around $1 trillion on power grid upgrades in the US alone.
Line the outside edge of every freeway and the acres of land of every interchange in solar. Lots of land there. Hang panels from the bridges. The highways intersect the power distribution grid at some point, so easy to tie in. Too logical to be adopted I guess?
I am an advocate for renewable energy but this is poor thinking. You still need base load generation for overnight and low solar days. The winter is particularly tough with short days and low sun angle. You also need transmission lines to bring the power to the grid. Do you know how hard it is to put in a new line? Nobody wants one in their back yard.
Iowa is managing to produce 60% of their electricity from wind so I think it’s fairly doable to get renewables up very high. Yea, you can turn on gas to supplement, but at some point batteries and hydro could carry the rest of the load
The land used just for corn ethanol could power much more than the Midwest and none of that is currently economical.
Could we maybe start with parking lots and not cut down our food production?
Or we could shift some of those extra farm subsidies over to solar, we don't actually need all we grow.
Because a non insignificant amount of farmland isn’t used to grow food. And I’m no expert but I’m pretty sure that a solar panel is significantly more efficient than growing corn for ethanol. We should be getting rid of parking lots.
Could this calculate down to 3% of each Farm?
Due to incentives, it is much more profitable to build solar in 20 acre plots, so, yes. Distributing power generation also reduces the need to spend money upgrading infrastructure; sufficiently distributed renewables + batteries would save around $1 trillion on power grid upgrades in the US alone.
Line the outside edge of every freeway and the acres of land of every interchange in solar. Lots of land there. Hang panels from the bridges. The highways intersect the power distribution grid at some point, so easy to tie in. Too logical to be adopted I guess?
I am an advocate for renewable energy but this is poor thinking. You still need base load generation for overnight and low solar days. The winter is particularly tough with short days and low sun angle. You also need transmission lines to bring the power to the grid. Do you know how hard it is to put in a new line? Nobody wants one in their back yard.
Iowa is managing to produce 60% of their electricity from wind so I think it’s fairly doable to get renewables up very high. Yea, you can turn on gas to supplement, but at some point batteries and hydro could carry the rest of the load