Outside of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston MA it is just a freezing winter day. On the contrary, inside of MIT Media Lab’s City Farm it could be spring in Rotterdam or even summer in Alaska. That is the power of technology to mimic the desired environments for people and/or plants. This does not come without costs. Such technology relies on electronic and mechanical systems which need constant input of fossil fuel based energy.
Energy is about to become the buzz word of 2015. As technology evolves and our living standards rise, so does energy demands. According to recent EU estimations buildings are responsible for more than 40% of energy consumption and 36% of CO2 emissions.
Greenhouses are perhaps the most extreme known example of energy inefficient buildings from a building physics point of view. Greenhouses are mostly made of transparent materials with low mass and with a low thermal resistance and enormous solar gains. This means great energy demands for heating and cooling to keep a steady controlled environment.
Energy is a property of objects, transferable via fundamental interactions, which can be converted into different forms and cannot be created nor destroyed. The challenge is to understand the energy flows and to apply energy conservation measures to improve efficiency.
Both EU and US governments set targets for new buildings to be nearly zero-energy in the coming decades. “Even if building would be energy neutral by 2030 that would not be good enough to prevent a potential energy crisis” according to Jorge Martins. Jorge, a MIT City Farm researcher from Westland (the Netherlands) further explains “The target should be buildings that are able to produce, deliver and store energy.” Being a Westland- trained engineer Jorge has years of experience with glass greenhouses which he currently applies with MIT scientists to gain insights in novel Energy Models. His background in Built Environment and Building Physics combined with his international greenhouse experience make the perfect recipe for further research in the field of Energy. Jorge plans to bring back his MIT experiences and network to the Netherlands and Westland specifically, where greenhouses are a major driver for the local economy.
The research group at MIT City Farm combines specialists from various multidisciplinary fields of science to develop dynamic models and complex algorithms to give provocative new insights of what real sustainability may look like. Solutions are being sought in unusual settings such as the integration of greenhouses with buildings or energy generating and storing buildings. Though this work area is still in its infancy, there are major gains to be made.
Surprisingly, it is not the ‘usual suspects’ like many traditional greenhouse companies or city and building developers that are most eager to get on top of energy efficient ways to manage our food production and built environment; on the contrary: new IT-business and major internet companies are starting new collaborations with the scientific world. Jorge believes that scientific knowledge should form the basis in the quest towards efficiency. Most likely, only companies who really invest in R&D and are willing to understand the required shift from traditional high energy based infrastructure to smart algorithm based greenhouses and buildings will be able to keep up.
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