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by averagewall 3053 days ago
Cycling isn't that great. Humans are about 10% efficient at converting food energy to power. Plants are about 10% efficient at converting sunlight to food energy. So that's 1% efficiency from solar to pedals. Once you count the fossil fuels used in farming, which I forget the numbers for, I think a motorbike works out better for greenhouse gas emissions than cycling. Electric bike is probably the best.

That's assuming you don't reduce other workouts to make up for it. So riding your e-bike to the gym defeats the purpose.

1 comments

> Plants are about 10% efficient at converting sunlight to food energy.

More like 0.25% to 0.5% into the edible parts of crop plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency