8 ms·

New study compares growing corn for energy to solar production

122 points by dotcoma 6mo ago

jqpabc123 6mo ago
The real reason why the USA can't compete in global manufacturing --- poor leadership. Leadership that caters to special interests instead of the overall, long term benefit of citizens and organizations. Nothing illustrates this better than energy policy and the foibles thereof. Ethanol is a particularly bad idea that only came about due to the farm lobby. Solar and renewables are progressing despite policy oppostion. Cheap energy offers a significant competituve advantage --- that USA policy openly and stupidly rejects.
- guelo 6mo ago
  It's not just the farm lobby, it's baked deep into the constitution and the political geography so that vast empty land stretches have hugely disproportional political power.
  - pbhjpbhj 6mo ago
    How do you think energy policy is baked into the Constitution? People vote, so how does land have political power? Presumably you mean people in low population density get disproportionate representation in USA?
    - pixl97 6mo ago
      The last point is what they mean. The Senate causes a number of problems with it's setup. But even the House and how small it is causes further problems. The number of reps there needs to go up by many many times.
      - kelseyfrog 6mo ago
        To add, there are many proposals[1] for Senate[2] reform[3]. Even a cursory glance reveals[4] an abundance[5] of different[6] suggestions[7]. 1. https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1378&context=ulr https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1378&con... 2. https://casten.house.gov/imo/media/doc/senate_constitutional_amendment.pdf https://casten.house.gov/imo/media/doc/senate_constitutional... 3. https://democracybillofrights.org/how-and-why-to-reform-the-senate/ https://democracybillofrights.org/how-and-why-to-reform-the-... 4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629819300083 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09626... 5. https://casten.house.gov/media/press-releases/casten-introduces-package-of-legislation-to-reform-american-democracy https://casten.house.gov/media/press-releases/casten-introdu... 6. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/RI_Fixing-The-Senate_report-201903.pdf https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/RI... 7. https://electoral-reform.org.uk/when-it-comes-to-fair-votes-the-us-senate-is-ripe-for-reform/ https://electoral-reform.org.uk/when-it-comes-to-fair-votes-...
      - danaris 6mo ago
        And that's not baked into the Constitution—it was set by law in the early 1900s, and could be changed by law. If we were to uncap the size of the House of Representatives, and instead change so that each district contains 50k people (or close to it), we would have roughly 7k representatives in the House. That would effectively eliminate the disproportionate advantage small states have there. (It would not, of course, do anything about the Senate; that would have to be addressed separately.)
        pjc50 6mo ago
        > If we were to uncap the size of the House of Representatives, and instead change so that each district contains 50k people (or close to it), we would have roughly 7k representatives in the House. Nice and proportional, but a completely unwieldy number of representatives. 700 reps for 500k people each would be more manageable. (of course, that means very little if (a) they're only from two parties and (b) all 7k districts are gerrymandered six ways from sunday)
    - drdec 6mo ago
      I believe the grandparent is referring to the US Senate, which was designed as the state's representation in the federal government, and where each state gets 2 senators. This means that California gets 2 senators but so do Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, etc. Now, the conclusion of the grandparent does not follow in my opinion. Nothing in the constitution mandates the current state boundaries. California could break itself into multiple states (there is a population minimum) and gain more representation in the senate if it wanted. But there are trade offs. California is a huge prize in the electoral college and has been a safe Democrat win for quite some time. Splitting into multiple states could jeopardize that. Being large also allows them to lead the way on regulation in a way that smaller states couldn't. The US government is quite the game theory problem.
      - MostlyStable 6mo ago
        I have a different reason why the conclusion doesn't follow: while it's true that less populous states have outsized influence in the senate, the constitution doesn't require (and in fact, originally discourages) the federal government to engage in the kind of activities being discussed here. These activities should be the domain of the states. But a long history of expanding federal power (and various supreme court decisions affirming those expansions along, in my opinion, dubious interpretations of both the constitution and various statutes, especially the commerce clause) has led to this issue. The fact that North Dakota has a lot more influence in the US Senate than California on a per capita basis shouldn't be that big of a deal, because the US Senate should be doing a whole heck of a lot less than it is, and states should be picking up that slack. The more power and responsibility we have given the federal government, the more the issues appear....because it's doing things never intended or envisioned by the founders.
    - buildsjets 6mo ago
      People are represented by Representatives, real estate is represented by Senators.
  - iso1631 6mo ago
    The more acres you have, the more kWh you can generate each year Why wouldn't land owners want to farm the sun?
    - karmelapple 6mo ago
      > Farm the sun Fantastic messaging! I could see this being a great way to market this, especially with something mentioned in the article: > Farm the sun to make 3X more money
    - philipkglass 6mo ago
      Leasing land for solar installations is popular with rural land owners. Or at least popular enough that there's rarely an issue finding enough willing owners to develop a new project. The problem is typically their neighbors agitating against allowing the actual land owners to sign leases. It's the rural equivalent of activists who fight apartment complex construction in the name of "preserving neighborhood character."
    - jedberg 6mo ago
      Energy can't be moved as easily as food. If you generate electricity in Iowa you can't easily sell it to California.
      - bryanlarsen 6mo ago
        The Eastern and Western grids are interconnected.
        jedberg 6mo ago
        Yes, but you can't just inject 100s of megawatts into the middle and hope it magically gets to the coasts. There are a lot of losses on the transmission lines and each step has a max capacity.
        bryanlarsen 6mo ago
        Sure, it's not a trivial exercise, but neither is food transport. That's a much harder problem that's been solved because we had to. The main reason we don't have a continental grid is because we don't need one.
- asdfman123 6mo ago
  It's not that our leaders are uniquely bad (do you think the CCP leaders are better?) but that the incentives for that kind of economic development aren't there. Largely due to, as you point out, special interests. EDIT: judging by the comments everyone here seems to love China
  - forgetfreeman 6mo ago
    "do you think the CCP leaders are better?" Yes, unambiguously. They appear to be aggressively investing in collaborative foreign policy projects globally, have a stellar track record when it comes to not starting random wars around the world, and their economic planning and engagement with decarbonization efforts massively outshine the US.
    - zdragnar 6mo ago
      You just need to stomach slavery, violent repression of political dissidents, live organ harvesting and a handful of other unpleasantries.
      - vondur 6mo ago
        Yeah, people here are insane to believe the CCP is some kind of technocratic benevolent autocracy.
        asdfman123 6mo ago
        It helps that they spend billions to manipulate public perception on forums like this one
        forgetfreeman 6mo ago
        The same can be said without irony about the current administration in the US so there is that. Anyway it's perfectly reasonable to point out the ways in which the CCP is outperforming western governments. If that bothers you then I'd say you may want to contact your representatives.
- lenerdenator 6mo ago
  > The real reason why the USA can't compete in global manufacturing --- poor leadership. I'd say it's partially that, but it's also priorities. When the Boomers were coming of age 40 years ago, they didn't want to work in factories like their parents had, and they didn't want to pay the prices necessary to pay American workers to make goods in an environmentally-responsible manner. So they gladly bought things made in China where - at the time - the average person would rather work in a factory than on a peasant farm, the labor was cheap, and whining about things like "air quality" and "potable water" were either not a high priority, or would get you dealt with by the local Party representatives who had been told that putting that new factory in was the difference between them advancing up the ranks or being sent to a re-education camp. If anything, China was the ultimate caterer to special interests, those being the Western companies who wanted to do business there without having to deal with hiring Westerners.
  - jqpabc123 6mo ago
    When the Boomers were coming of age 40 years ago When the Boomers were coming of age, there was no trade with China.
    - bluGill 6mo ago
      there was tiawan and japan for your cheap junk fix. Both are not known for cheap junk anymore
    - lenerdenator 5mo ago
      In other words, they were the ones who made it a reality. Which really was the dumbest geopolitical move in American - and maybe Western - history, but whatever. Too late now.
- niccl 6mo ago
  How about Bill Gates as US's Benevolent Dictator For Life?
  - adrian_b 6mo ago
    While the young Bill Gates did many disgusting things, after retiring he behaved quite decently in comparison with other similarly rich people. In any case, he would have been an infinitely better president than people like Bush Junior or Trump. Probably also better than people like Biden, who is not remembered for doing something good, but only for not being so bad as his predecessor and successor.
    - otterley 6mo ago
      > after retiring he behaved quite decently in comparison with other similarly rich people. Well, except for that whole Jeffrey Epstein thing: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/gates-foundation-launched-outside-review-of-bill-gates-epstein-ties/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/gates-f...
      - adrian_b 6mo ago
        I did not follow this affair more thoroughly, but the link provided by you shows only a suspicious relationship between Nathan Myhrvold and Epstein, without saying anything conclusive about Gates.
tim-tday 6mo ago
Corn ethanol fuel has been a known scam for decades.
- therobots927 6mo ago
  Just another handout. Ironically many of the recipients of said hand outs oppose social welfare programs.
  - dotcoma 6mo ago
    Socialism for the rich and rugged capitalism for the poor -- MLK
  - tombert 6mo ago
    I think the theoretical idea is that we want to ensure that there is always a very large domestic corn supply, in the event of war or something. Corn is a crop that has a lot of uses; it can be refined into sugar, it can be used as flour, it's relatively energy dense food-wise, and it can be fairly easily converted into fuel if necessary. I'm not saying I fully agree with the reasoning but I at least kind of get it.
    - testaccount28 6mo ago
      right. view it instead as "we need to keep domestic corn production above a certain threshold." the result is that we have a lot of extra corn. now the question becomes: what do we do with this extra corn? we can either throw it away, or turn it into fuel. it's not an efficient course if the target is fuel, but that's not the target. it is a decent use if we have lots of corn that nobody wants, which we do.
  - jmclnx 6mo ago
    I would say it is even worse, it is a scam to feed $ to the rich due to Gov subsidizes. Plus, IIRC, ethanol is used as a way to make people think it is OK to use fossil fuels allowing the oil industry to point to these farms. Plus I heard too high an ethanol mixture can damage your engine, thus adding to "planned obsolescence".
epistasis 6mo ago
> roughly 12 million hectares of US farmland—an area the size of New York State—is currently devoted to corn crops that are farmed not for food, but for fuel. 2.6M - 5.7M hectares (10,000-22,000 sq miles), less than half of this ethanol land, would power all electricity in the US: https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us-solar/ https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us... For other comparisons, there are roughly 0.8M hectares of rooftop in the United States (table ES-1 here, 8.13e9 sq m https://docs.nlr.gov/docs/fy16osti/65298.pdf https://docs.nlr.gov/docs/fy16osti/65298.pdf). Looking at LLNL's flowchart of energy in the US: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2024-12/energy-2023-united-states.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2024-12/e... that solar will produce ~13 quads of energy. That's out of a total of only 32.1 quads total of all energy services delivered. When electrifying from fossil fuels to electricity, we only need to (roughly) meet that 32.1 of services; EVs very efficiently deliver electricity to the purpose of movement, ICE are like 20%-30% at best. Burning fossil fuels for heat is ~99% efficient, but heat pumps give you 300%-400% efficiency because they move heat rather than convert electricity directly to heat. So converting all ethanol land use to solar would power the entire US; that's ignoring all the wind power we generate, all the hydropower we generate, all the next generation geothermal that will probably come online over the next decade. And at the base of it all, storage is super cheap these days! The transition is possible now, it will be cheaper than fossil fuels, and the longer we let fossil fuel misinformation deceive us, the more we will waste on expensive energy.
- Rekindle8090 6mo ago
  [flagged]
csours 6mo ago
I'd love to see an investigation into fossil fuel accumulation over geological time scales - especially petroleum. From what I've seen, 10,000 barrels per year is a reasonable guestimate. If that is the case, then just the electrical energy harvested from solar panels in the UK could convert air into fuel at a faster rate than the WHOLE earth (on average over geological time scales) (as long as the fuel conversion/production was at least 1% efficient at converting electricity to fuel). https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1owp09/if_oil_takes_millions_of_years_to_be_made_how/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1owp09/if_oil_t... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096249517300200 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209624951...
- Rekindle8090 6mo ago
  solar panels dont convert air into fuel
  - csours 6mo ago
    Thank you? Solar panels don't convert air to fuel directly, but you could use the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction
    - lostmsu 6mo ago
      H2 is already a fuel
  - margalabargala 6mo ago
    Solar panels generate energy which can be used for a variety of purposes. One of those uses is converting air to fuel. If it helps you, think of it like money. You cannot eat it or be sheltered beneath it, but you can use it to purchase food and shelter.
  - Brian_K_White 6mo ago
    Of course they do. They convert anything you want into anything else you want.
iso1631 6mo ago
Technology Connections covered this a few months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM - from about 22m to 38m
oidar 6mo ago
Solar is nice and all - it's is cleaner than fossil fuels, but requires a bunch of inputs. Geothermal really needs to be pushed for more; after the initial investment, requires basically no inputs and has no toxic byproducts or disposal problems. "The full technical potential of next-generation geothermal systems to generate electricity is second only to solar PV among renewable technologies and sufficient to meet global electricity demand 140-times over." https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-geothermal-energy/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-geothermal-energy/...
- epistasis 6mo ago
  Inputs for solar? Do you mean the sun? That's a new complaint I've never heard anybody state. But agreed, advanced geothermal is likely to have a ton of deployment. It's fun to follow all the startups making great progress right now. The big thing to watch will be the degradation in heat levels over 10-20 years; depletion of heat faster than the ability of the surround rock to conduct it is the biggest threat to the technology as a whole right now. But early pilots are showing no fall in output temperature so far, so that's great.
  - oidar 6mo ago
    > Inputs for solar? Do you mean the sun? That's a new complaint I've never heard anybody state. Well more precisely, the inputs for making the solar panels compared to the inputs for making geothermal plants. The best of solar last 30 years atm and the best of geothermal atm last 100+ years. Not to mention you don't need any rare imported minerals to make geothermal plants.
    - jeffbee 6mo ago
      It depends on what you're doing. Steam turbines are absolutely full of exotic alloys. But I tend to agree that large-scale geothermal would be an important component of our all-of-the-above energy policy, which would profit from our existing expertise in punching holes in the ground.
    - pjc50 6mo ago
jfengel 6mo ago
Joules per acre seems an odd thing to maximize. Solar and corn don't require the same land. And we're not running out of land. We know that ethanol isn't really energy efficient. We do it partly because we like having way, way too much food capacity (as a matter of security), and partly because we love to fetishize farmers (especially the ones in Iowa, who get a lot of attention every four years during Presidential campaigns).
dlcarrier 6mo ago
Switchgrass isn't all that uncommon in parts of the US that process corn into ethanol, and it is more efficient but less subsidized, so corn beats it out. Sugarcane is even more efficient, but it doesn't grow in most of the US. The real question isn't about using biofuels in place of electric power, it's most important in place of other fuels in applications where electrification isn't possible, like air travel. Air travel is not only the fastest form of travel in common use, it's also one of the most efficient, due to the thin air at cruising altitudes. If jet fuel derived from sugarcane or switchgrass becomes cost effective, airplanes can be solar powered for cheap.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- otterley 6mo ago
  I agree with most of your comment except for this one: > Air travel is not only the fastest form of travel in common use, it's also one of the most efficient, due to the thin air at cruising altitudes While airplanes are slightly more efficient than cars at transporting passengers on a distance/energy basis (and only if you exclude electric cars), trains are still much more efficient by about 30%. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport#US_Passenger_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport... With respect to carrying freight, cargo ships are the most efficient of all.
  - dlcarrier 6mo ago
    I'm talking about the physics, not the logistics. Logistics are a present challenge, but physics are a hard limit, so load capacity and power conversion losses don't really have the same insurmountable bearing as rolling resistance and drag. Drag increases with the square of the speed, so fuel efficiency is really only comparable at a given speed. Water is extremely viscous, so it creates a lot of drag, and cargo ships must scale to huge sizes and stay under 20 knots to have high efficiency. Trains are only flowing through air, which is much thinner than water, so freight trains and most passenger rail go double or triple that speed. High-speed rail doubles to triples the speed again, but is much, much less efficient than rail traveling at freight speeds, because it has no means of avoiding the added drag. If you were to try and increase high-speed rail by another two to three times, you'd need a rarefied tunnel to make it approach being practical, which is basically what Hyperloop proposed. It's much more practical to use the already existing rarefied atmosphere at high altitudes, which is why airplanes have unmatched efficiency for travel at those speeds. When travel time going into days or even weeks doesn't matter, e.g. for cargo, all that matters to efficiency is how slow you can go. When time is taken into consideration, as speeds go up rail becomes more efficient than boats, but they top out and airplanes are more efficient than rail. Eventually sub-orbital rockets become more efficient than airplanes, but there isn't a lot of travel needed at those speeds.
wcoenen 6mo ago
Once you realize how much more efficient solar panels are (compared to plants) at capturing energy from the sun, the next logical question is: could it make sense to synthesize food with the help of electricity from solar power? There is a company called Solar Foods which is exploring exactly that: they use solar power to produce hydrogen, feed that hydrogen and CO2 to Xanthobacter bacteria, and harvest the produced protein. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016777992500321X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016777992...
- aaron695 6mo ago
  [dead]
- rubyfan 6mo ago
  sounds delicious
- IncreasePosts 6mo ago
  AIUI plants are actually only responsive to a few wavelengths of light for most of their growth. I've wondered, if solar panels can collect energy over a broader spectrum, if it could actually be more efficient to drive LEDs tuned to just what plants need, driven by broad spectrum solar power. In this way you could, theoretically, power a 3d growing operation based solely on the solar panels on the roof.
  - zhivota 6mo ago
    I love this idea and it's one of those ideas I categorize into the bucket of "when all the other lower hanging fruit has been picked", just because it's more complicated. When we've got actually braindead policy like ethanol fuel mandates, the ROI of switching a corn farm to solar is so incredibly high that solutions like this just aren't competitive. I wish some of our billionaire class would turn their attention to these things rather than building yet another rocket company. Maybe that's why Gates is buying up farmland, who knows.
    - tbrownaw 6mo ago
getnormality 6mo ago
If the solar panels are movable we can go back to the Middle Ages formula where some of the land is left fallow each year to improve yields!
surround 6mo ago
Its more efficient energy-wise, but isn't the issue that energy from solar panels can't power gas cars?
- subscribed 6mo ago
  You're almost there :)
  - surround 5mo ago
    I'm not sure what you're referring to. If corn is replaced with solar panels that doesn't solve the fact that there will still be a ton of cars that demand ethanol-infused gasoline.
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo ago
How good are solar panels at converting CO2? How good is corn? It'd be wise to look at all the variables.
- subscribed 5mo ago
  This particular corn is converted into ethanol that immediately releases the captured co2 back. How much of co2 can be trapped in the soil and biomatter if we let native plants live underneath the panels?
  - MisterMower 5mo ago
    How much CO2 is released producing, shipping, and installing the solar panels? GP is right: you gotta consider all the variables.
    - subscribed 5mo ago
      Technology Connections did the maths. How much CO2 is released tiling, planting, spraying, sowing, spraying, watering, spraying, harvesting, processing, storing, transporting, processing and finally fossil fuels use in the ethanol production? That's only CO2, but let's not forget about nitrogen oxide, emitted in the huge quantities due to the use of fertilizers. And that's without mentioning the pollution with pesticides, killing the wildlife and turning the soil into a dead concrete. Dead soil sequesters no co2. And that happens/worsens every time with corn, while with solar panels you emit co2 only once during their lifetime. Watch this TC video, he's much better at the details. See: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8931354/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8931354/ and also: https://wisconsinwatch.org/2025/12/corn-clean-energy-ethanol-fuel-climate-wisconsin-farm-agriculture/ https://wisconsinwatch.org/2025/12/corn-clean-energy-ethanol...
      - MisterMower 5mo ago
        Very good, but you only did half the work for a reasonable comparison. Now figure up the costs for solar panel production, installation, operation, and disposal, and compare them.
latentframe 6mo ago
31/1 is kind of wild and its hard to justify corn ethanol on efficiency alone; so it looks like this exists mainly because of the policy and not because it’s actually a good way to produce energy
takihito 5mo ago
[dead]
balderdash 5mo ago
I recall reading a research piece a few years ago that basically said you’d need a ~$5-6 gas price (RBOB - ~$3.5 today) for biofuel to be profitable on an unsubsidized basis. Not directly comparable but it highlighted that it wasn’t really that good an idea.

122 points by dotcoma 6mo ago

The real reason why the USA can't compete in global manufacturing --- poor leadership. Leadership that caters to special interests instead of the overall, long term benefit of citizens and organizations. Nothing illustrates this better than energy policy and the foibles thereof. Ethanol is a particularly bad idea that only came about due to the farm lobby. Solar and renewables are progressing despite policy oppostion. Cheap energy offers a significant competituve advantage --- that USA policy openly and stupidly rejects.

guelo 6mo ago
It's not just the farm lobby, it's baked deep into the constitution and the political geography so that vast empty land stretches have hugely disproportional political power.
- pbhjpbhj 6mo ago
  How do you think energy policy is baked into the Constitution? People vote, so how does land have political power? Presumably you mean people in low population density get disproportionate representation in USA?
  - pixl97 6mo ago
    The last point is what they mean. The Senate causes a number of problems with it's setup. But even the House and how small it is causes further problems. The number of reps there needs to go up by many many times.
    - kelseyfrog 6mo ago
      To add, there are many proposals[1] for Senate[2] reform[3]. Even a cursory glance reveals[4] an abundance[5] of different[6] suggestions[7]. 1. https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1378&context=ulr https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1378&con... 2. https://casten.house.gov/imo/media/doc/senate_constitutional_amendment.pdf https://casten.house.gov/imo/media/doc/senate_constitutional... 3. https://democracybillofrights.org/how-and-why-to-reform-the-senate/ https://democracybillofrights.org/how-and-why-to-reform-the-... 4. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962629819300083 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09626... 5. https://casten.house.gov/media/press-releases/casten-introduces-package-of-legislation-to-reform-american-democracy https://casten.house.gov/media/press-releases/casten-introdu... 6. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/RI_Fixing-The-Senate_report-201903.pdf https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/RI... 7. https://electoral-reform.org.uk/when-it-comes-to-fair-votes-the-us-senate-is-ripe-for-reform/ https://electoral-reform.org.uk/when-it-comes-to-fair-votes-...
    - danaris 6mo ago
      And that's not baked into the Constitution—it was set by law in the early 1900s, and could be changed by law. If we were to uncap the size of the House of Representatives, and instead change so that each district contains 50k people (or close to it), we would have roughly 7k representatives in the House. That would effectively eliminate the disproportionate advantage small states have there. (It would not, of course, do anything about the Senate; that would have to be addressed separately.)
      - pjc50 6mo ago
        > If we were to uncap the size of the House of Representatives, and instead change so that each district contains 50k people (or close to it), we would have roughly 7k representatives in the House. Nice and proportional, but a completely unwieldy number of representatives. 700 reps for 500k people each would be more manageable. (of course, that means very little if (a) they're only from two parties and (b) all 7k districts are gerrymandered six ways from sunday)
  - drdec 6mo ago
    I believe the grandparent is referring to the US Senate, which was designed as the state's representation in the federal government, and where each state gets 2 senators. This means that California gets 2 senators but so do Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, etc. Now, the conclusion of the grandparent does not follow in my opinion. Nothing in the constitution mandates the current state boundaries. California could break itself into multiple states (there is a population minimum) and gain more representation in the senate if it wanted. But there are trade offs. California is a huge prize in the electoral college and has been a safe Democrat win for quite some time. Splitting into multiple states could jeopardize that. Being large also allows them to lead the way on regulation in a way that smaller states couldn't. The US government is quite the game theory problem.
    - MostlyStable 6mo ago
      I have a different reason why the conclusion doesn't follow: while it's true that less populous states have outsized influence in the senate, the constitution doesn't require (and in fact, originally discourages) the federal government to engage in the kind of activities being discussed here. These activities should be the domain of the states. But a long history of expanding federal power (and various supreme court decisions affirming those expansions along, in my opinion, dubious interpretations of both the constitution and various statutes, especially the commerce clause) has led to this issue. The fact that North Dakota has a lot more influence in the US Senate than California on a per capita basis shouldn't be that big of a deal, because the US Senate should be doing a whole heck of a lot less than it is, and states should be picking up that slack. The more power and responsibility we have given the federal government, the more the issues appear....because it's doing things never intended or envisioned by the founders.
  - buildsjets 6mo ago
    People are represented by Representatives, real estate is represented by Senators.
- iso1631 6mo ago
  The more acres you have, the more kWh you can generate each year Why wouldn't land owners want to farm the sun?
  - karmelapple 6mo ago
    > Farm the sun Fantastic messaging! I could see this being a great way to market this, especially with something mentioned in the article: > Farm the sun to make 3X more money
  - philipkglass 6mo ago
    Leasing land for solar installations is popular with rural land owners. Or at least popular enough that there's rarely an issue finding enough willing owners to develop a new project. The problem is typically their neighbors agitating against allowing the actual land owners to sign leases. It's the rural equivalent of activists who fight apartment complex construction in the name of "preserving neighborhood character."
  - jedberg 6mo ago
    Energy can't be moved as easily as food. If you generate electricity in Iowa you can't easily sell it to California.
    - bryanlarsen 6mo ago
      The Eastern and Western grids are interconnected.
      - jedberg 6mo ago
        Yes, but you can't just inject 100s of megawatts into the middle and hope it magically gets to the coasts. There are a lot of losses on the transmission lines and each step has a max capacity.
        bryanlarsen 6mo ago
        Sure, it's not a trivial exercise, but neither is food transport. That's a much harder problem that's been solved because we had to. The main reason we don't have a continental grid is because we don't need one.
asdfman123 6mo ago
It's not that our leaders are uniquely bad (do you think the CCP leaders are better?) but that the incentives for that kind of economic development aren't there. Largely due to, as you point out, special interests. EDIT: judging by the comments everyone here seems to love China
- forgetfreeman 6mo ago
  "do you think the CCP leaders are better?" Yes, unambiguously. They appear to be aggressively investing in collaborative foreign policy projects globally, have a stellar track record when it comes to not starting random wars around the world, and their economic planning and engagement with decarbonization efforts massively outshine the US.
  - zdragnar 6mo ago
    You just need to stomach slavery, violent repression of political dissidents, live organ harvesting and a handful of other unpleasantries.
    - vondur 6mo ago
      Yeah, people here are insane to believe the CCP is some kind of technocratic benevolent autocracy.
      - asdfman123 6mo ago
        It helps that they spend billions to manipulate public perception on forums like this one
      - forgetfreeman 6mo ago
        The same can be said without irony about the current administration in the US so there is that. Anyway it's perfectly reasonable to point out the ways in which the CCP is outperforming western governments. If that bothers you then I'd say you may want to contact your representatives.
lenerdenator 6mo ago
> The real reason why the USA can't compete in global manufacturing --- poor leadership. I'd say it's partially that, but it's also priorities. When the Boomers were coming of age 40 years ago, they didn't want to work in factories like their parents had, and they didn't want to pay the prices necessary to pay American workers to make goods in an environmentally-responsible manner. So they gladly bought things made in China where - at the time - the average person would rather work in a factory than on a peasant farm, the labor was cheap, and whining about things like "air quality" and "potable water" were either not a high priority, or would get you dealt with by the local Party representatives who had been told that putting that new factory in was the difference between them advancing up the ranks or being sent to a re-education camp. If anything, China was the ultimate caterer to special interests, those being the Western companies who wanted to do business there without having to deal with hiring Westerners.
- jqpabc123 6mo ago
  When the Boomers were coming of age 40 years ago When the Boomers were coming of age, there was no trade with China.
  - bluGill 6mo ago
    there was tiawan and japan for your cheap junk fix. Both are not known for cheap junk anymore
  - lenerdenator 5mo ago
    In other words, they were the ones who made it a reality. Which really was the dumbest geopolitical move in American - and maybe Western - history, but whatever. Too late now.
niccl 6mo ago
How about Bill Gates as US's Benevolent Dictator For Life?
- adrian_b 6mo ago
  While the young Bill Gates did many disgusting things, after retiring he behaved quite decently in comparison with other similarly rich people. In any case, he would have been an infinitely better president than people like Bush Junior or Trump. Probably also better than people like Biden, who is not remembered for doing something good, but only for not being so bad as his predecessor and successor.
  - otterley 6mo ago
    > after retiring he behaved quite decently in comparison with other similarly rich people. Well, except for that whole Jeffrey Epstein thing: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/gates-foundation-launched-outside-review-of-bill-gates-epstein-ties/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/gates-f...
    - adrian_b 6mo ago
      I did not follow this affair more thoroughly, but the link provided by you shows only a suspicious relationship between Nathan Myhrvold and Epstein, without saying anything conclusive about Gates.

tim-tday 6mo ago

Corn ethanol fuel has been a known scam for decades.

therobots927 6mo ago
Just another handout. Ironically many of the recipients of said hand outs oppose social welfare programs.
- dotcoma 6mo ago
  Socialism for the rich and rugged capitalism for the poor -- MLK
- tombert 6mo ago
  I think the theoretical idea is that we want to ensure that there is always a very large domestic corn supply, in the event of war or something. Corn is a crop that has a lot of uses; it can be refined into sugar, it can be used as flour, it's relatively energy dense food-wise, and it can be fairly easily converted into fuel if necessary. I'm not saying I fully agree with the reasoning but I at least kind of get it.
  - testaccount28 6mo ago
    right. view it instead as "we need to keep domestic corn production above a certain threshold." the result is that we have a lot of extra corn. now the question becomes: what do we do with this extra corn? we can either throw it away, or turn it into fuel. it's not an efficient course if the target is fuel, but that's not the target. it is a decent use if we have lots of corn that nobody wants, which we do.
- jmclnx 6mo ago
  I would say it is even worse, it is a scam to feed $ to the rich due to Gov subsidizes. Plus, IIRC, ethanol is used as a way to make people think it is OK to use fossil fuels allowing the oil industry to point to these farms. Plus I heard too high an ethanol mixture can damage your engine, thus adding to "planned obsolescence".

epistasis 6mo ago

> roughly 12 million hectares of US farmland—an area the size of New York State—is currently devoted to corn crops that are farmed not for food, but for fuel. 2.6M - 5.7M hectares (10,000-22,000 sq miles), less than half of this ethanol land, would power all electricity in the US: https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us-solar/ https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us... For other comparisons, there are roughly 0.8M hectares of rooftop in the United States (table ES-1 here, 8.13e9 sq m https://docs.nlr.gov/docs/fy16osti/65298.pdf https://docs.nlr.gov/docs/fy16osti/65298.pdf). Looking at LLNL's flowchart of energy in the US: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2024-12/energy-2023-united-states.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2024-12/e... that solar will produce ~13 quads of energy. That's out of a total of only 32.1 quads total of all energy services delivered. When electrifying from fossil fuels to electricity, we only need to (roughly) meet that 32.1 of services; EVs very efficiently deliver electricity to the purpose of movement, ICE are like 20%-30% at best. Burning fossil fuels for heat is ~99% efficient, but heat pumps give you 300%-400% efficiency because they move heat rather than convert electricity directly to heat. So converting all ethanol land use to solar would power the entire US; that's ignoring all the wind power we generate, all the hydropower we generate, all the next generation geothermal that will probably come online over the next decade. And at the base of it all, storage is super cheap these days! The transition is possible now, it will be cheaper than fossil fuels, and the longer we let fossil fuel misinformation deceive us, the more we will waste on expensive energy.

Rekindle8090 6mo ago
[flagged]

csours 6mo ago

I'd love to see an investigation into fossil fuel accumulation over geological time scales - especially petroleum. From what I've seen, 10,000 barrels per year is a reasonable guestimate. If that is the case, then just the electrical energy harvested from solar panels in the UK could convert air into fuel at a faster rate than the WHOLE earth (on average over geological time scales) (as long as the fuel conversion/production was at least 1% efficient at converting electricity to fuel). https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1owp09/if_oil_takes_millions_of_years_to_be_made_how/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1owp09/if_oil_t... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2096249517300200 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209624951...

Rekindle8090 6mo ago
solar panels dont convert air into fuel
- csours 6mo ago
  Thank you? Solar panels don't convert air to fuel directly, but you could use the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction
  - lostmsu 6mo ago
    H2 is already a fuel
- margalabargala 6mo ago
  Solar panels generate energy which can be used for a variety of purposes. One of those uses is converting air to fuel. If it helps you, think of it like money. You cannot eat it or be sheltered beneath it, but you can use it to purchase food and shelter.
- Brian_K_White 6mo ago
  Of course they do. They convert anything you want into anything else you want.

iso1631 6mo ago

Technology Connections covered this a few months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM - from about 22m to 38m

oidar 6mo ago

Solar is nice and all - it's is cleaner than fossil fuels, but requires a bunch of inputs. Geothermal really needs to be pushed for more; after the initial investment, requires basically no inputs and has no toxic byproducts or disposal problems. "The full technical potential of next-generation geothermal systems to generate electricity is second only to solar PV among renewable technologies and sufficient to meet global electricity demand 140-times over." https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-geothermal-energy/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-geothermal-energy/...

epistasis 6mo ago
Inputs for solar? Do you mean the sun? That's a new complaint I've never heard anybody state. But agreed, advanced geothermal is likely to have a ton of deployment. It's fun to follow all the startups making great progress right now. The big thing to watch will be the degradation in heat levels over 10-20 years; depletion of heat faster than the ability of the surround rock to conduct it is the biggest threat to the technology as a whole right now. But early pilots are showing no fall in output temperature so far, so that's great.
- oidar 6mo ago
  > Inputs for solar? Do you mean the sun? That's a new complaint I've never heard anybody state. Well more precisely, the inputs for making the solar panels compared to the inputs for making geothermal plants. The best of solar last 30 years atm and the best of geothermal atm last 100+ years. Not to mention you don't need any rare imported minerals to make geothermal plants.
  - jeffbee 6mo ago
    It depends on what you're doing. Steam turbines are absolutely full of exotic alloys. But I tend to agree that large-scale geothermal would be an important component of our all-of-the-above energy policy, which would profit from our existing expertise in punching holes in the ground.
  - pjc50 6mo ago

jfengel 6mo ago

Joules per acre seems an odd thing to maximize. Solar and corn don't require the same land. And we're not running out of land. We know that ethanol isn't really energy efficient. We do it partly because we like having way, way too much food capacity (as a matter of security), and partly because we love to fetishize farmers (especially the ones in Iowa, who get a lot of attention every four years during Presidential campaigns).

dlcarrier 6mo ago

Switchgrass isn't all that uncommon in parts of the US that process corn into ethanol, and it is more efficient but less subsidized, so corn beats it out. Sugarcane is even more efficient, but it doesn't grow in most of the US. The real question isn't about using biofuels in place of electric power, it's most important in place of other fuels in applications where electrification isn't possible, like air travel. Air travel is not only the fastest form of travel in common use, it's also one of the most efficient, due to the thin air at cruising altitudes. If jet fuel derived from sugarcane or switchgrass becomes cost effective, airplanes can be solar powered for cheap.

deleted 6mo ago
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otterley 6mo ago
I agree with most of your comment except for this one: > Air travel is not only the fastest form of travel in common use, it's also one of the most efficient, due to the thin air at cruising altitudes While airplanes are slightly more efficient than cars at transporting passengers on a distance/energy basis (and only if you exclude electric cars), trains are still much more efficient by about 30%. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport#US_Passenger_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport... With respect to carrying freight, cargo ships are the most efficient of all.
- dlcarrier 6mo ago
  I'm talking about the physics, not the logistics. Logistics are a present challenge, but physics are a hard limit, so load capacity and power conversion losses don't really have the same insurmountable bearing as rolling resistance and drag. Drag increases with the square of the speed, so fuel efficiency is really only comparable at a given speed. Water is extremely viscous, so it creates a lot of drag, and cargo ships must scale to huge sizes and stay under 20 knots to have high efficiency. Trains are only flowing through air, which is much thinner than water, so freight trains and most passenger rail go double or triple that speed. High-speed rail doubles to triples the speed again, but is much, much less efficient than rail traveling at freight speeds, because it has no means of avoiding the added drag. If you were to try and increase high-speed rail by another two to three times, you'd need a rarefied tunnel to make it approach being practical, which is basically what Hyperloop proposed. It's much more practical to use the already existing rarefied atmosphere at high altitudes, which is why airplanes have unmatched efficiency for travel at those speeds. When travel time going into days or even weeks doesn't matter, e.g. for cargo, all that matters to efficiency is how slow you can go. When time is taken into consideration, as speeds go up rail becomes more efficient than boats, but they top out and airplanes are more efficient than rail. Eventually sub-orbital rockets become more efficient than airplanes, but there isn't a lot of travel needed at those speeds.

wcoenen 6mo ago

Once you realize how much more efficient solar panels are (compared to plants) at capturing energy from the sun, the next logical question is: could it make sense to synthesize food with the help of electricity from solar power? There is a company called Solar Foods which is exploring exactly that: they use solar power to produce hydrogen, feed that hydrogen and CO2 to Xanthobacter bacteria, and harvest the produced protein. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016777992500321X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016777992...

aaron695 6mo ago
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rubyfan 6mo ago
sounds delicious
IncreasePosts 6mo ago
AIUI plants are actually only responsive to a few wavelengths of light for most of their growth. I've wondered, if solar panels can collect energy over a broader spectrum, if it could actually be more efficient to drive LEDs tuned to just what plants need, driven by broad spectrum solar power. In this way you could, theoretically, power a 3d growing operation based solely on the solar panels on the roof.
- zhivota 6mo ago
  I love this idea and it's one of those ideas I categorize into the bucket of "when all the other lower hanging fruit has been picked", just because it's more complicated. When we've got actually braindead policy like ethanol fuel mandates, the ROI of switching a corn farm to solar is so incredibly high that solutions like this just aren't competitive. I wish some of our billionaire class would turn their attention to these things rather than building yet another rocket company. Maybe that's why Gates is buying up farmland, who knows.
  - tbrownaw 6mo ago

getnormality 6mo ago

If the solar panels are movable we can go back to the Middle Ages formula where some of the land is left fallow each year to improve yields!

surround 6mo ago

Its more efficient energy-wise, but isn't the issue that energy from solar panels can't power gas cars?

subscribed 6mo ago
You're almost there :)
- surround 5mo ago
  I'm not sure what you're referring to. If corn is replaced with solar panels that doesn't solve the fact that there will still be a ton of cars that demand ethanol-infused gasoline.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 6mo ago

How good are solar panels at converting CO2? How good is corn? It'd be wise to look at all the variables.

subscribed 5mo ago
This particular corn is converted into ethanol that immediately releases the captured co2 back. How much of co2 can be trapped in the soil and biomatter if we let native plants live underneath the panels?
- MisterMower 5mo ago
  How much CO2 is released producing, shipping, and installing the solar panels? GP is right: you gotta consider all the variables.
  - subscribed 5mo ago
    Technology Connections did the maths. How much CO2 is released tiling, planting, spraying, sowing, spraying, watering, spraying, harvesting, processing, storing, transporting, processing and finally fossil fuels use in the ethanol production? That's only CO2, but let's not forget about nitrogen oxide, emitted in the huge quantities due to the use of fertilizers. And that's without mentioning the pollution with pesticides, killing the wildlife and turning the soil into a dead concrete. Dead soil sequesters no co2. And that happens/worsens every time with corn, while with solar panels you emit co2 only once during their lifetime. Watch this TC video, he's much better at the details. See: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8931354/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8931354/ and also: https://wisconsinwatch.org/2025/12/corn-clean-energy-ethanol-fuel-climate-wisconsin-farm-agriculture/ https://wisconsinwatch.org/2025/12/corn-clean-energy-ethanol...
    - MisterMower 5mo ago
      Very good, but you only did half the work for a reasonable comparison. Now figure up the costs for solar panel production, installation, operation, and disposal, and compare them.

latentframe 6mo ago

31/1 is kind of wild and its hard to justify corn ethanol on efficiency alone; so it looks like this exists mainly because of the policy and not because it’s actually a good way to produce energy

takihito 5mo ago

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balderdash 5mo ago

I recall reading a research piece a few years ago that basically said you’d need a ~$5-6 gas price (RBOB - ~$3.5 today) for biofuel to be profitable on an unsubsidized basis. Not directly comparable but it highlighted that it wasn’t really that good an idea.