8/ BigAg is taking land away. “Converting the nation’s [US] 40 million acres of ethanol corn farms into solar-plus-food facilities would generate 1.5 times our nation’s electricity needs, while also powering a 100% EV fleet.” https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/03/10/solarfood-in-ethanol-fields-could-fully-power-the-united-states/
However, if we were to transition this 40 million acres are of fuel to solar+food (agrivoltaics) – we could still meet 100% of our electricity needs, and power a nationwide fleet of electric vehicles.
Recent research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory suggests that utility scale solar power in the United States generates between 394 and 447 MWh per acre per year. (For this document we’ll assume a more conservative 350 MWh/acre)*. Thus, just one acre of solar panels provides enough energy to propel America’s most popular electric vehicle – the Tesla Model Y – nearly 1.3 million miles each year.
In a good year, one acre of corn is expected to generate around 328 gallons of ethanol. Since ethanol contains only ? the energy of gasoline, a comparable crossover SUV averaging 30 miles per gallon would travel only 6,600 miles per year on that acre of corn.
That’s not a typo. solar panels produce roughly 200 times more energy per acre than corn. This striking figure makes an ironclad case in favor of converting vehicles to electricity – and that’s before we take into account the environmental and health benefits which would result from the profound reduction in emissions.