> One hectare of sugar cane yields 4,000 litres of ethanol per year (without any additional energy input, because the bagasse produced exceeds the amount needed to distill the final product). This, however, does not include the energy used in tilling, transportation, and so on. Thus, the solar energy-to-ethanol conversion efficiency is 0.13%.
but I'm still pessimistic about the efficiency of the new method.
The thing that will kill as an energy storage method it is capital and labour expenses more than efficiency. I'd expect something like it to be viable for chemical feedstock once the fossil fuel subsidies start to die out and less investment goes into extracting more and worse sources cheaply though.
> One hectare of sugar cane yields 4,000 litres of ethanol per year (without any additional energy input, because the bagasse produced exceeds the amount needed to distill the final product). This, however, does not include the energy used in tilling, transportation, and so on. Thus, the solar energy-to-ethanol conversion efficiency is 0.13%.
but I'm still pessimistic about the efficiency of the new method.