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by throwaway_yy2Di
4559 days ago
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"At present rates of consumption in the US (20 million bbl/day, or 7.3 billion annually), you'd need 30 - 75 million acres devoted to fuel production, if I'm getting my math right. Yield claimed here are for 280 gal/acre, or 6.7 bbl/acre." My math disagrees with yours, I'm getting 1.1 billion acres? That's about 1/5th of the figure I got for the globe. https://www.google.com/search?q=%2820+million+oil+barrels+%2... |
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At 6 bbl/acre for jatropha as described in the article, you'd need 1200 million acres. On the high end, that's a region 1370 miles on a side -- roughly half the area of the US (very roughly -- I'm using a 1000 mi x 3000 mi rectangle as an approximation). Wikipedia says 3,717,813 mi^2, 570,000 of those are Alaska. Yeah, 60% of the non-Alaskan land area of the country.
There are 409 million acres of arable farmland in the US (about 17% of the total land area).
Your 1/5 estimate works out as the US consumes about 20% of global oil extraction.