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Strategies & Market Trends : Bonds, Currencies, Commodities and Index Futures
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To: Casaubon who wrote (5807)4/17/2005 10:14:26 AM
From: Moominoid  Read Replies (2) of 12411
 
As far as converting sunlight into energy plants convert about 1-2% and solar photovoltaics 15% + From an economic point of view the plant is cheaper of course as it just grows (though it uses up more landspace). However, producing crop-plants like grains in the US though costs a lot of energy in both direct energy use and production of the inputs. This makes sense if we are producing human or animal feed as they can't eat the petroleum directly. But it doesn't make much sense for producing industrial energy. Biodiesel or whatever might look financially competitive if it has no tax on it and uses waste oil to produce it. Last semester I had a student who wrote a paper on this topic in my environmental economics class. He was convinced of the merits, but he didn't convince me that like was being compared with like in a true economic sense.
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