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Just saying
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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As per the video, 30 million acres of land is used to grow ethanol that is mixed into petrol. We could replace every car in the country with electric, and power our entire electricity grid with solar power, with that land. Solar farms are less destructive to the land than corn farming so even if replacing all that farmland with solar panels only provided enough power for electric cars, it would still be a positive in terms of land use.
75x land use is as compared only to power-plants. If I go swimming tomorrow I've 999999x'd my shark attack risk. And as a share of America it's only 1-2% of the total area of the United States (to power the entire country) and can replace all the corn ethanol crops to a net environmental benefit.
As for batteries, they are recyclable (as the video goes into). They do add to the cost of renewables but not so much that they cancel out having to constantly mine coal and set it on fire to never be used again. There are wind turbines which even out the duck curve, but in this thought experiment the entire country is going solar powered only.
As for why business leaders aren't investing in renewables, I need to make an important distinction. Renewables aren't the "cheapest form of power generation", they are the "cheapest form of new power generation". It is cheaper to keep running existing gas-fired and nuclear power stations until they reach EOL than it is to tear them down prematurely and replace them with solar. A large number of power stations are rapidly reaching EOL and it's very important that we don't build any more coal-fired power plants right now (due to an explicit government policy of burning more coal, perhaps). Each one we build will last 50-100 years and be cheaper to keep running than replace with renewables.
The majority of ethanol based crop production comes from growing corn in the Midwest, specifically Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana. Ranked by population density that's:
By percentage of the US population that's
There are practical reasons why we typically try to generate power close to where it will be used. Yes, theoretically you can realistically supply power up to 3000 miles away, but most power plants only provide power to around 500 miles away. Yes we could cover the Corn Belt with solar panels and then wire it to the coasts, but doing so has it's own risks and drawbacks. Ethanol agriculture makes sense where it is because the population density is so low and both corn and ethanol can be shipped with relatively low loss.
I'm not arguing that they aren't recyclable but rather they aren't accessible at the volume needed. A quick google search said that current utility scale battery storage exceeds 26 GW (10^9), but only represents 2% of total generating capacity. To provide power for approximately half the day, based on our previous math, we would need need ~7x10^11 W.
Just so my math is clear from the beginning, 17x10^12 W / 2 (half the day) / 12 (hours per half day) = 7x10^11 W of battery which is 27 times more than we currently have.
I think this is a fair and nuanced point. In my opinion the solution is not one singular option, such as 100% solar, but a mix of options which might include some percentage of non-renewable energy. I think reduction of non-renewable should be the goal, but switching 100% to renewable does not seem feasible to me.
My argument was never that we "should" replace all our ethanol corn crops with solar panels. Just that we could. And we could still theoretically make it work with enough money and gumption (and moving energy intensive industries inland to reduce the need for transmission).
Lithium supply is a concern. We don't have enough in the world to support the green transition and there's no clear solution. A few that come to mind are:
I think we should use a small amount of methane to supply power in the event of an emergency, instead of building enough batteries to supply us for an entire year of cloudy weather and stagnant air. In the first place the thought experiment was about 35 million acres of solar, not about a 100% renewable grid. That's a separate discussion to be had among engineers.
Guys, Gals...hear me out: I can easily half all the numbers in your calculations: do something about the energy efficiency and get to the same per capita consumption as e.g. France and Germany.
Boom, instant less area consumption.
Won't be enough to resolve the fact that we just don't have enough lithium.