[FoRK] "Using switchgrass as a biofuel yields five times more energy than is used to grow it."

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 03:27:41PM -0800, Tom Higgins wrote:

> "Switchgrass, a prairie grass that sways around the borders of many US
> fields, offers 540% more energy than the energy sown into it, research
> has shown. The renewable fuel should be seriously considered as a
> low-greenhouse-gas, high-energy biofuel source, the researchers say."

I've seen a paper a couple years ago in Science that we're tapping into some
one third to one half photosynthetic output of the planet.

Because of this and because of low photosynthesis efficiency (some 0.5%)
we should focus on PV (Nanosolar claims 3 weeks energy return, do the
math) and synfuels. In general, I expect liquid hydrocarbon (dense energy
carriers as they are) to retreat into niches.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE