The report, the first published by the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, acknowledges that in the future land-use restrictions will often pit solar-energy developers and biofuel producers against each another.
Open-field biomass can generally only store 1%-6% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth’s surface. In contrast, PV and solar-thermal systems perform must better, with efficiencies averaging around 15% and stretching as high as 25%.
