12.How much land would be needed to supply biofuels to meet ALL our energy needs? Is this close to feasible?

Question

I can't find the answer :(

Answer 1

I like Bob W's answer although he does not take into account that Corn is not the most effective use of land for the manufacture of bio-fuels.

The most effective is hemp which produces more than 10 times the mass per harvest per acre as corn. Hemp also does not need to be rotated with other plants to maintain the nutrients in the soil. You can grow 2+ crops per year as well, depending on the climate.

Sugar Beets and Sugar cane are also much more effective uses of the land for bio-fuels. See the use of Sugarcane in Brazil for ethanol. Brazil is a net exporter of energy do to the use of ethanol in fuels.

Also his statement that the manufacture of bio-diesel is only 25% efficient is not accurate. Through the use of all the parts of the plants in question in different parts of the conversion(ie. Burning stalks to create heat needed in esterification process)you can get 98% efficiency.

From Biodiesel Fact Sheet
"Does biodiesel take more energy to make than it gives back?
No. Biodiesel actually has the highest “energy balance” of any transportation fuel. The DOE/USDA lifecycle analysis shows for every unit of fossil energy it takes to make biodiesel, 3.2 units of energy are gained. This takes into account the planting,
harvesting, fuel production and fuel transportation to the end user."

So using Bob W's example and using Hemp as your plant instead of corn and taking into account a 98% efficiency you can see that it would take less than 1% of the arable land to produce enough bio fuels to meet all our energy needs.

1% isn't that much. We currently use more than 5% to feed the world.

Answer 2

Political pressure from the global warming (no, wait -- global climate change) liberals looking to make a quick buck off their fellow citizens mostly. Take Al Gore for example who stands to become even wealthier off the Crap & Trade fiasco if it ever passes both levels of Congress. However, the amount of inexpensive fossil fuels is slowly decreasing resulting in either more technologies to find and produce them (such as deepwater oil & gas exploration) or else higher prices due to somewhat limited availabilities. Look at all the shale gas exploration and production going on in the US. Those formations have been overlooked for over 100 years as they were dismissed as to the amounts of natural gas they contained and the amounts of natural gas they could produce. Now there are 6 major shale gas plays within the US and several in Canada which have just occurred in the past 5 years. The truth of the matter is that we in the US have been pursuing alternative energy sources and novel insulating effects for the past 40 years but it has just never caught on. Those sources are wind, solar, geothermal, earthen homes (built into hillsides or covered with dirt), hydroelectric, and even electrical vehicles. Fuel cells and even more novel energy sources are being researched. Nuc

Answer 3

Unfortunately, for the sort of crops available for that purpose in the US, the amount is infinite: it requires the energy equivalent of a gallon of biofuel to create a gallon of biofuel. Biofuels will not be practical until essentially all of a plant can be turned into a liquid combustible product, and we don't know how to do that yet.

Answer 4

The world consumes 50 million barrels of oil per day, which would translate to about 2.5X10^12 kg/year.

North Dakota gets about 3.04 tons of corn per acre (refer to www.ag.ndsu.edu for that figure), and about 1.1 tons of soybeans per acre. An additional 16 tons of vegetable matter (stalks, sheaths, etc) is produced.

Now, you have to alternate corn with soybeans, so that the soybeans can replenish the nitrogen in the soil. Assuming you do a direct corn/soybean/corn/soybean rotation without any resting of the fields, it would average about 8.5 tons of vegetable matter per acre.

Assuming a ton of vegetable matter could generate a ton of biodiesel, about 292 million acres would be needed to generate enough biodiesel. The world has about 3.6 billion acres, according to the statistics on www.nationmaster.com. So, about 8.1% of the world's arable land would be needed to produce biodiesel, with perfect results.

However, the biodiesel process is not 100% effective. The process is estimated to be about 25-30% efficient. So, assuming the best, that would increase the earlier figure to 973 million acres, which would be about 32.4% of our total arable land.

That much of our arable land would be too much of a burden on the need of that land to provide food for the world, so it would be infeasible.

Answer 5

Not only is it not feasible, but if it were, we'd starve to death because the land would be used for fuel INSTEAD of food!

Answer 6

we dont have enough land,
no not feasible

Answer 7

all of Texas