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Old 09-09-2008, 04:11 PM   #19 (permalink)
PhishPhood
7.0 Liter LS7 V8
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Further on up the road..
Posts: 4,735
Re: The future of fuel will arrive next year

Quote:
Originally Posted by PhishPhood View Post
Good point.. how many 1000 acre plants ( @ $1 Billion each ) would be needed to cut our oil usage by say 20%?
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Answer: almost 7,000 plants ( $7 Trillion )

Here is another 'order of magnitude' perspective.

Just to cut our usage by 20% we'd need 7000 of these plants at 1000 acres each across the US at a cost of about $7 Trillion.

However there are only about 3500 county or 'county equivalents' in the entire US. That means each and every one of these would have to set aside 2000 acres!! ( NYC, Chicago, LA, Rhode Island, etc ) in order to produce this bio-ethanol. Rots of Ruck.

The technology is promising but it has to be far far more productive, by at least a factor of 10 or 20 or 50.
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