Putting solar panels on land used for biofuels would produce enough electricity for all cars and trucks to go electric
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Electric vehicles might be promoted as the key technological solution for low-carbon transport today, but they weren’t always the obvious option. Back in the early 2000s, it was biofuels.1 Rather than extracting and burning oil, we could grow crops like cereals and sugarcane, and turn them into viable fuels.
(By Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado, January 12, 2026)
While we might expect biofuels to be a solution of the past due to the cost-competitiveness and rise of electric cars, the world produces more biofuels than ever. And this rise is expected to continue.
In this article, we give a sense of perspective on how much land is used to produce biofuels, and what the potential of that land could be if we used it for other forms of energy. We’ll focus on what would happen if we used that land for solar panels, and then how many electric vehicles could be powered as a result.
„The world dedicates a Poland-sized area of land to liquid biofuels. Is there a more efficient way to generate energy?“ weiterlesen
