111–120 of 464 posts
Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels. The vertical farm is a paradox unless fossil fuels provide the energy. In that case, there’s not much sustainable about it. This entire piece is based on the assumption that the only sources of…
Or some of the other many non solar panel renewable energy sources, like gaining electricity from water (fall or sea tide) wind or geothermal sources.
And while atom power is human unfriendly (i.e. humans are weak against it) it not so much climate unfriendly and even nature itself can live fairly fine with the radiation pollution they might cause in the worst case. Sure humans are not fine, we have societies and are long lived enough so that the cancer caused from such radiation poltion is a serious problem.
Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels. The vertical farm is a paradox unless fossil fuels provide the energy. In that case, there’s not much sustainable about it. This entire piece is based on the assumption that the only sources of…
The other thing to remember is that there is a lot of land that isn't suitable for farming for one reason or another that can be used for solar.
We're talking about powering a hydroponic greenhouse. The alternative to "Solar Powered LEDs" isn't "plant things in the ground". Its "make a glass window on your roof".
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"Plant things in the ground" is also cheaper, though it does suffer from potentially poor soil conditions. Still, it seems to me that spreading fertilizer across soil (and conditioning the soil into a growable state) would be cheaper and easier than making large-scale indoor hydroponics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and I updated my comment just as you were posting this to mention losses due to reconversion. However, also keep in mind that even large efficiency losses can still lean in favor of photovoltaics/LEDs, because plants only use about 10% of the sun's energy in the first place.
The problem with talking about photosynthetic efficiency is that there are different endpoints you can talk about. The more efficient plants (C4 plants like sugarcane and maize) have something like 4% efficiency converting sunlight to biomass, but they actually absorb a 53% of the incoming light based on spectrum, and lose about 24% of the energy because photons with shorter wavelengths have excess energy which the p…
Plants are green because they value light consistency instead of total energy. Green light has too many peaks and valleys and can overload the photosynthesis systems so they reflect a lot of it.
It's the "renewables without batteries" problem only in biology.
Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels. The vertical farm is a paradox unless fossil fuels provide the energy. In that case, there’s not much sustainable about it. This entire piece is based on the assumption that the only sources of…
The other thing to remember is that there is a lot of land that isn't suitable for farming for one reason or another that can be used for solar.
And there are many other renewal energy sources.
Like geothermal power in some areas or water (fall or tide) based power in other areas.
And you can put this power sources in a lot of places which are fully unusable for farming.
Artificial lighting saves land because plants can be grown above each other, but if the electricity for the lighting comes from solar panels, then the savings are canceled out by the land required to install the solar panels. The vertical farm is a paradox unless fossil fuels provide the energy. In that case, there’s not much sustainable about it. This entire piece is based on the assumption that the only sources of…
For example the the Brunswick nuclear power plant in North Carolina, covers 1,200 acres or 4,860,000 square meters for 1,858 MW = 382 w/m2. It’s stated lifetime capacity factor is 75% which is much higher than solar, but that’s ignoring the long construction and decommissioning process afterwards.
You can find both higher and lower energy density examples, but I personally was surprised how close they where.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other thing to remember is that there is a lot of land that isn't suitable for farming for one reason or another that can be used for solar.
> lot of land that isn't suitable for farming We're talking about powering a hydroponic greenhouse. The alternative to "Solar Powered LEDs" isn't "plant things in the ground". Its "make a glass window on your roof". -------- "Plant things in the ground" is also cheaper, though it does suffer from potentially poor soil conditions. Still, it seems to me that spreading fertilizer across soil (and conditioning the soil i…
Doesn't work as you can't stack plants with it nor can you grow them underground.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, burn tons of fossil fuels to mine bitcoin, thus forcing tons of fossil fuels to be burned to build new generating capacity? Nope, can't think of any issues with it.
We waste tons of energy every day on useless things. I'm not trying to argue Bitcoins energy usage vs alternatives. To me the thought provoking part is increases demand but for things that could be turned off for a while. I think vertical farming is especially interesting in that case. Yes we want things to use less energy & be more efficient. I hope that goes without saying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The other thing to remember is that there is a lot of land that isn't suitable for farming for one reason or another that can be used for solar.
> lot of land that isn't suitable for farming We're talking about powering a hydroponic greenhouse. The alternative to "Solar Powered LEDs" isn't "plant things in the ground". Its "make a glass window on your roof". -------- "Plant things in the ground" is also cheaper, though it does suffer from potentially poor soil conditions. Still, it seems to me that spreading fertilizer across soil (and conditioning the soil i…