A data driven assessment of the role of verticle farming in feeding the world.
“The economics of producing leafy greens and lettuce in vertical farms can work, if electricity prices are low”
A data driven assessment of the role of verticle farming in feeding the world.
“The economics of producing leafy greens and lettuce in vertical farms can work, if electricity prices are low”
I think it could be interesting to integrate these into newly build apartment buildings. They could function as a sort of light shaft in the interior and should also be quite efficient to block noise between apartments. Heating would be also mostly “free” in such a setup.
But wouldn’t this reduce the amount of living space, and still require more construction? We see this very clearly with structures in the US that are required to include parking garages—much higher costs and fewer units.
Unless there’s some under-utilized space that could have this added without taking up additional space and that could be practically managed, I’m not sure how that would work.
But it’s definitely worth considering. The advantages of having food production in apartments would be huge, but I think we need to be rigorous and skeptical to make sure it pencils out.
Light-shafts or relatively inefficient building layouts are necessary once a building hits a certain size, so this would probably not have a big impact on overall living space. Of course such a building would be more expensive to build, but it might be possible to offset if the vertical farm’s profits would benefit the same housing coop.
Moisture would be an issue with such a set up, and could cause mold and mildew in apartment units