Scotland’s renewables boost vertical farming credentials Marine natural capital in focus Exascale computing could supercharge crisis response capability December 2023 13 Dr Frances Sandison Scotland’s increasing use of renewable energy could make vertical farming techniques more climate friendly than the traditional ways our greens are grown in fields, according to research by the Hutton. They found that using indoor, controlled farming methods for growing lettuce would emit more carbon than traditional open field methods, based on Scottish energy use in 2019. But that increased use of renewables for power – which accounts for up to 91% of the carbon footprint of vertical farming – could now mean it’s on a par with UK open-field grown lettuce in terms of its environmental credentials. With 100% renewable electricity and further improvements of the technique, emissions from indoor growing could fall further, to less than other traditional growing methods, including Spanish grown lettuce and lettuce grown in UK heated greenhouses. But even with 100% renewable energy, vertical farming has still yet to achieve carbon neutrality, cautions Dr Frances Sandison, a life cycle analyst at the Hutton, who led the work. The Hutton has joined a consortium working to help develop a pathway to greater financial investment for nature restoration in the marine environment. The group, consisting of Kaly Group, the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and the Hutton, is investigating how to establish a market in marine natural capital in Scotland in a way that includes and supports local communities. The project has been awarded £100,000 from the Scottish Government and NatureScot, in partnership with The National Lottery Heritage Fund, under the new Facility for Investment Ready Nature in Scotland (FIRNS) grant scheme. A team of UK scientists led by The James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen are hoping to show how an advanced form of computer modelling could help supercharge how governments deal with major issues like pandemics – if it can be used on the world’s latest and most powerful socalled “exascale” computers. Agent based modelling can simulate how societies would react to a pandemic, war and energy supply problems. But it requires huge computational power to run and can take months to get results, which could be too late to influence decisions to avert or mitigate crises.
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