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Photovoltaics beat biofuels at converting sun's energy to miles driven
Date:1/17/2013

ns that have very high hypothetical switchgrass yields of 16 or more tons per hectare."

PV conversion also has lower GHG emissions throughout the life cycle than do cellulosic biofuels, even in the most optimistic scenario for the latter. "The bottleneck for biofuels is photosynthesis," Geyer says. "It's at best 1-percent efficient at converting sunlight to crop, while today's thin-film PV is at least 10-percent efficient at converting sunlight to electricity.

Finally, while cost was not a key component of the study, Geyer says, "The cost of solar power is dropping, and our quick calculations suggests that with the federal tax credit, electric vehicles are already competitive."

What does this mean for the future?

"What it says to me is that by continuing to throw money into biofuels, we're barking up the wrong tree," Geyer explains. "That's because of a fundamental constraint, which is the relative inefficiency of photosynthesis. And we can't say that right now, biofuels aren't so great but they'll be better in five years. That fundamental problem for biofuels will not go away, while solar EVs will just continue to get more efficient and cheaper. If they're already looking better than biofuels, in five years the gap will be even greater. A search for a silver bullet is under way through "synthetic photosynthesis," but using genetic engineering to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis is a pipe dream. If there is a silver bullet in energy, I think it's solar power."


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Contact: James Badham
media@bren.ucsb.edu
University of California - Santa Barbara
Source:Eurekalert

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