Environmental Assessment of Vertical Farming from a Resource Nexus Perspective

The combination of an increasing global population and the impact of climate change on vital resources such as water, nutrients, energy, land, and soil has necessitated innovative solutions to address the unprecedented strain on food security in a sustainable, cost-saving, resilient, and effective manner in adherence to the Sustainable Development Goals. A promising approach in urban areas is vertical farming (VF).

Existing studies have often focused on the individual, siloed aspects of the resources involved in VF, such as water use, energy use, and carbon emissions, considered technical solutions or the profitability of VF rather than addressing the interlinkages.

Therefore, this project aims to provide holistic environmental assessment concepts that can be applied to several case studies. Furthermore, this project will investigate the potential for a Resource Nexus approach to be integrated into the planning and assessment of VF to minimise its environmental footprint. It will also look at the economic feasibility of VF projects focusing on Germany.

This project is funded by BoB Immobilienkonzepte GmbH.