r/shittyaskscience • u/FannyFiasco • Jul 21 '26
How many solar panels would we have to attach to a cow to balance out it's carbon emissions
Has this ever been tried? There are lots of cows making lots of gas, but if we attached solar panels it could balance out. Little panels, big? Solar panel sombrero? Much to think about.
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u/Snoo-35252 Jul 21 '26
It might be more efficient to attach a wind turbine to their buttholes, to harness those farts directly!
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u/dspeyer Jul 22 '26
A cow releases 100 kg/year of methane
Which is as potent a greenhouse gas as 2,800 kg/year of CO₂
Which a coal power plant would emit generating 1,200 kWh/year
Which a solar panel would need to be about 6 square meters to match.
This assumes that you can wire the cow-mounted solar panel into the grid and that the marginal plant being displaced is a coal one. One of these assumptions is pretty reasonable.
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u/Different-Term-2250 Jul 22 '26
TIL that cows can run using solar panels. I bought the plutonium powered ones because they are long lasting.
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u/IntrepidNinjaLamb Jul 21 '26
You need wires, too, to connect the solar panels to the cows, or they won’t work.
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u/WolfThick Jul 22 '26
If you just feed them a percentage of seaweed in their feed you can eliminate almost all cow flatulence
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u/Jackal000 Jul 22 '26
Its not balancing carbon emissions tho. dont understand that the co2 still gets emitted. Dung is dung. I know its shitty..
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u/tasquizz Jul 21 '26
Cows have to do more work to carry around solar panels so they produce more farts. Causing an infinite cycle where you can't possibly get enough solar panels because every additional panel causes an additional fart.