Everything has to come together

General Discussions
1

I think it was @plonkster who recently made the point that EVs make sense if the grid is extended and fed entirely by non-polluting sources.

I just saw an insert on Sky about a novel use of farm land. The farm is owned by a company (don’t ask, I didn’t jot down the name) who built lots of buildings on this farm land. In those buildings are lots of lights, burning 24 hours a day (power saving lamps are used) and hydroponics systems. And they are growing lots and lots of herbs & berries. They have production lines that package the goods.

They are trying to make a point that you can have lots of crops grown in your own country, all year round, but the cost of electricity needs to come down, electricity generation has to have a smaller footprint, and the grid has to expand rapidly.

They have another facility ready for turning on, but they’ve been told they can’t get a connection to the grid until 2029.

At the moment it pays because they are sticking to crops that have to be imported and thus are expensive, but they have done trial runs with cereals and root crops and they CAN grow those, but as things are now they won’t make money.

So at the moment they are growing lots of herbs and other high price imported crops to send a message to the public and to government: here’s a taste of what you could have.

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The company is named Fischer, and is owned by an investment company.

Here’s an article about the farm that Sky visited.

Notes

  1. greater yields
  2. no pesticides
  3. the production line covers the whole cycle for the current crops. Seeds are planted in trays. Tray gets moved to the germination room. Once the seedlings emerge the trays are moved to a growing room. Once the crop is grown it is moved to a harvesting room. Harvesting is from the same trays which are then returned for replanting.
  4. controlled environment (airlocks even)
  5. the investors are betting on the cost of the tech coming down and the efficiency improving.
  6. less soil needed & less damage done to the soil.
3 Likes
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Maybe I did say that, but I think it is a bit less extreme than that. We need our overall energy use to make no more carbon than the natural sinks can handle. That doesn’t mean zero. I don’t know what that number is exactly. Probably a lot closer to zero than to whatever it is right now :slight_smile: