I don't understand, can't we get Biomass from like undesirable items like (not to gross anyone out, but feces?) whereas corn still has some value where you can actually eat it.
> Looking at land-use efficiency, corn-derived ethanol used to power internal combustion engines requires about 85x (range: 63-197x) as much land to power the same number of transportation miles as solar PV powering electric vehicles.
Corn farmers could be doing literally anything else, including a whole variety of things that rebuild soil or capture carbon or generate electricity, and it would be equally effective at powering the Iowa caucus, as long as we pay them to do it. They could even be producing crops organically, producing free-range livestock, or producing different lower-return higher-nutrition types of food, should we ever be interested in changing our diet a little. Deciding to produce the world's largest excess food supply in an industrialized fashion and then literally burning it was maybe a poor use of resources.
now we're talking - can I invest in your company?
The problem I see is that there's not enough money in in to develop a new process. Cellulosic ethanol outperforms corn on nearly every measure, but there's not enough money in it to pay for the development needed to scale it up to industrial levels.
Cover sunny, bleak northern africa in towering photovoltaics panels baby!
I’m as optimistic as the next person about energy tech, but I hope it doesn’t turn out like yet more colonialism.
It's not useless, it's arid.
> which plays a key role in how the climate works
As does ever other square meter on Earth, and its natural abundant resource could be leveraged to even greater overall good.
> Extractive industry ... like yet more colonialism.
I'm not sure how we got here, or what your actual concern is.