![]() If you point out the waste you are likely to get an ignorant and indifferent response like "that's just the way it is".Īs to your concern they are burning fossil fuels, really? Natural gas burns very cleanly and, while it does emit CO2, the fast growing plants consume much of it. I would need a lot more hands to count the instances of extreme waste I've seen in typical American businesses. The innovation and industriousness displayed here is exceptional! You can write it off as an economy "flush" with natural gas but a closer look will show that's not what this is about! The way they generate the electricity on-site and use the "waste" products (heat and CO2) to warm their greenhouses and accelerate photosynthesis with CO2 is commendable and is what makes these businesses viable in a market based economy. That said, this story is about some folks in a natural gas flush economy (from the HUGE dutch Groningen gas field), with resulting cheap and green electricity (18 eurocents/kWh retail and 350 gCO2/kWh) turning fossil calories from under the ground into yummy salad ingredients. As a legacy of generations of NOT rounding up their best fighters to be sent off to war.they are the tallest people in Europe! While their neighbors were fighting multi-generational wars over land, the Dutch just made more land as needed, happily surrendered when the invaders came, waited (and joked ruthlessly about them behind their backs) until they left, or were displaced by the next invaders. I greatly admire the Dutch, who created and still dominate my scientific research area as a spin-off of their great historical geo-engineering projects. This is about what the US produces from hydro+wind+solar, or nuclear power these days. ![]() Under LEDs, dutch style, we could grow those tomatoes in a corner of Delaware or Vermont, and only need to pump in 500 billion kWh or 500 TWh of electricity. The annual CA tomato crop recently was about 15 million tons, or about 122 billion medium tomatoes. The Google says a medium tomato (123g) contains about 22 calories, and so would require ~ 7 kWh of electricity if grown solely under LED lights! If we say that Dutch ingenuity and feeble sunlight gets them twice that yield per kWh.lets call it a few kWh/tomato. This converts to about 0.33 kWh per calorie. So every calorie of food raised would need 300 kcals of electricity. Grow LEDs are maybe 30% efficient electricity to light, and higher plants convert light to food crop energy at ~1% efficiency in a greenhouse intensive environment. I'm more than a little worried about the **energy intensity** of the LED-greenhouse 'vertical farm' mode of agriculture. ![]() Good for them.īut can we 'feed the world' that way, or can we just keep them well supplied with yummy tomatoes for their lo-cal salad? I am also not surprised that the farmers can make a buck selling high value crops.like perfect, delicious vine ripened tomatoes. I guess I am not surprised that pesticides and water use can be massively reduced in a greenhouse, and that yields in cloudy Holland can be massively increased with application of LED lights. NatGeo is always great for 'feel good' and pretty pictures, but when it comes to heavy hitting, not so much. OK, I thought about this a bit more.I like it less.
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