One Acre Energy Comparisons

One of my favorite reference books is “The Energy Primer” published in 1974. It has comprehensive review articles on solar, wind, water, and biomass energy. The following chart comes from a great article on biomass written by Richard Merrill. When I taught semester courses to college students at ARC, I tried to give students useful comparisons so they would be able to estimate the potential success of alternate technologies (unfortunately, fads that are bound to fail are all too prevalent in the green culture).

How much renewable energy can be grown on an acre of land? Can a family create an energy budget based on yearly production? As seen below, there are big differences in the amounts of energy that can be produced by a one acre grain field or one acre woodlot.

One acre of hay yields something like 29 million BTUs per year. One acre of trees is better, producing an estimated 42 million BTUs per year.

If the hay is turned into alcohol the yield is greatly reduced (6 million BTU/year) and the average yield of 3.5 tons per acre of trees is approximately 8.5 million BTU/year.

If the hay is fed to cows and the manure is turned into methane the energy content is 15 million BTU/yr.

Burning biomass for heating and cooking can be a lot more efficient than making alcohol or methane to be used for the same purpose.

At ARC, after decades of “living on the land”, we think that one or two acres of biomass for energy and five acres for food is a good place to start calculations when planning for a secure and happy family. It’s amazing to own land!