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Title: | THE MATH: "Jatrofuel" is doable, but alone cannot replace oil | |||
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| Name: | Robert | | |||
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| City: | Beersheba | State: | Israel | | |
| According to the article, 3 tons of oil can be produced from 2.5 acres of jatropha crop. So how much land is needed to completely replace fossil oil? World oil consumption is about 30 billion barrels a year, i.e. less than 4 billion tons. So doing simple math, it turns out that about 3.3 billion acres of jatropha would be needed to completely replace oil. What does 3.3 billion acres look like on the map? Since 1 acre equals about .004 square kilometers, that means 3.3b acres equals about 13.2 million sq km, which happens to equal the area of Antartica. That would be about: 45% of Africa, 55% of North America, 80% of Russia, and 130% of Europe (!). Most importantly, there are only about 4 billion acres of arable land in the entire world! Obviously, the world can`t dedicate 80% of its arable land to biofuel. However, it could be that the jatropha plant is hearty enough to be grown on land not defined as arable, and in any case could provide a good percentage of world oil needs. |
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