Suggested by 
NANCY RIVEONG
over 1 year ago
Producing food in a controlled environment agriculture (specifically vertical farms, plant factories and modular farms) is energy intensive. According to Agritecture’s “2021 CEA Global Census Report”, producing a kilogram of lettuce in controlled environment agriculture uses 15-20x more energy if grown in greenhouses, and over 100x more energy if grown in vertical farms, and vertical farms can produce as much as 8.43kg CO2 per kg of harvested crop. This number than can offset some of the other benefits of growing food indoors.
The frequent occurrences of droughts, severe storms, flooding, extreme temperatures, and wildfires due to climate change and shifting weather patterns are threatening food production all over the world. With the promise of being able to produce higher yields per acre and achieving year-round crop production while using less water and producing less food waste and carbon footprint, controlled environment agriculture (“CEA”) is seen as one solution to protect food production from the impacts of climate change.
However, CEA operators need better ways to be more energy efficient and need to reduce their carbon footprint.
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
Are you interested in addressing this Unmet Need?
Serial ClimateTech Entrepreneur, Investor & Ecosystem Builder @ Infiniblaze
I watched the cannabis industry in Colorado make this mistake over and over... (1) find an old building, (2) buy lots of high power lights, (3) don't do anything about the water system, (4) ignore the value of the waste products.
The problem starts with the building, water, ventilation, lighting, and energy design at the outset. In other words, these operations will be way more efficient and effective if they design their own facilities and systems at the outset for long term operating value. There are only a few that are doing this -- and they are doing this in a vertically integrated way.
My questions for this exercise is (1) who is the customer, (2) who owns the building, and (3) are you thinking about greenfield design or retrofit as a model?
Founder @ Cannected
You're absolutely correct. It would have to start with creating an efficient design for the grow facility and using optimized solutions for their HVAC, lighting, water pumps etc. However, for those who are already in operation, how can they find out which of their machinery or equipment consumes the most energy. Wexus seems to be already monitoring the energy use and providing reports. Operators can then see which of the equipment they can potentially replace with more energy efficient product, if at all possible. As you brought up, perhaps the operators do not own the building, so who would be responsible for a major change, such as installing different HVAC systems? Could there be smaller changes that they could make (changing their LED lighting) to improve energy efficiency? Some of these structural changes may not be possible because of the high cost or because of building ownership.
However, if you can create a smart energy management system that automates the load balancing according to the energy supplier's demand response, then potentially, the operator can save cost.