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Elon Musk, in the Q&A section of his recent talk at Oxford (download here: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/view/211 http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/vid
by TomAnthony 14y ago
Elon Musk, in the Q&A section of his recent talk at Oxford (download here: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/view/211 http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/view/211) also said he believes all biofuels are useless.
His point was that putting energy into biofuels is an inefficient way to use the suns energy, and then getting it out is also inefficient. He compared the efficiency to solar.
- btilly 14y agoNot just "an inefficient way". In the best case, biofuels are 2 orders of magnitude less efficient than solar. That said we could theoretically produce around our current energy needs with a perfect biofuel. (Existing biofuels are much, much worse than this theoretical fuel.) We'd just need to convert all land we currently use for agriculture to that purpose. (And then what would we eat?) If his numbers are correct - and I see no reason to doubt it - biofuels have to be a dead end.
- nickik 14y agoThe thing is that you can produce energy at one place and then move it around the world cheaply. This does not work with solar. You can produce it but storing and disributing is much, much harder.