Energy 174 (2019) 191e197

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/energy

Review

Local heat, local food: Integrating vertical hydroponic farming with

district heating in Sweden
Matthew Gentry
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: By 2050, it is estimated that 70% of the world's population will live in urban areas. This growth in cities
Received 2 August 2018 creates a demand for fresh produce to ensure a healthy population, produce that often has to travel a
Received in revised form long way to reach the consumer, not only losing quality and nutrition along the way, but also requiring a
21 January 2019
significant fossil fuel cost for transportation and storage. The average plate of food will travel over
Accepted 16 February 2019
Available online 18 February 2019
2400 km before it reaches your plate. There is potential within District heating (DH) areas to move
farming indoors and into the heart of the urban environment. Vertical hydroponic farming (VHF) offers
many advantages over conventional farming including more efficient water and land use, and vastly
Keywords:
4th Generation District Heating
reduced transport costs if it is performed in the urban area. For this model to become economically
Hydroponic farming sustainable however, it must be intelligently integrated into existing urban infrastructure. A mutually
CO2 reduction beneficial relationship with DH is possible whereby VHFs are integrated to feed back into the DH system,
Smart energy lower the return temperature in line with 4th Generation District Heating guidelines, and reduce CO2
Plant factories emissions in food and energy production.
Vertical farming Crown Copyright © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
2. The growth of urban farms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
3. Costs and benefits of hydroponic farming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
4. Linking hydroponic farming to district heating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
4.1. Feeding heat back into the DH network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
4.2. Feeding fuel back into the DH network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
4.3. CO2 re-circulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
4.4. Lowering return temperature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
5. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

1. Introduction areas [1]. This growth in cities creates a demand for fresh produce
to ensure a healthy population, produce that often needs to travel a
There is an increasing need to improve food production long way to reach the consumer, not only losing quality and
worldwide. By 2050 it is expected that the global population will nutrition along the way, but also requiring a significant fossil fuel
reach approximately 10 billion people by 2050, and it is estimated cost for transportation and storage. Adding to this is the packaging
that by this time, 66% of the world's population will live in urban and preservatives required, which often have delayed environ-
mental effects. These costs are further exacerbated by the
increasing demand for a variety of foods to be available out of
E-mail address: Matthew.gentry@slu.se.
season, meaning that our food often travels to us from around the

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2019.02.119
0360-5442/Crown Copyright © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
192 M. Gentry / Energy 174 (2019) 191e197
world. Sweden for example, imports over 70% of its fresh fruit and
vegetables, accounting for a significant proportion of the total food
production energy for the country [2]. The average plate of food has
travelled 2400 km by the time it has reached you which, beside the
energy requirements, has hidden costs e vegetables lose approxi-
mately 30% of their nutritional value in the first three days after
harvest and must be treated with various chemical preservatives to
prevent over ripening in transit. It is therefore of importance, in
order to reduce the energy cost of food production and increase the
quality of food for an increasing urban population, to develop
means for more local food production within cities. For this change
to take place, new farming methods need to fit into the existing city
structure to produce economically viable plans for hyper-local food
production. There are a number of increased costs associated with
farming in urban areas, so it is important to work with the existing
city infrastructure to bring these down as much as possible to make
new urban farms profitable. To this end, a mutually beneficial
system can be engineered between urban farming and the existing
district heating (DH) system in Sweden. This relationship can form
a part of the 4th Generation District Heating (4GDH) smart energy
system improving both the efficiency of the DH network and
making urban farming more economically viable by reducing en-
ergy costs.
DH began to be established at the turn of the last century,
originating from coal power and steam networks and has pro-
gressively developed into lower temperature systems [3]. The
development of this system has allowed a network that can supply
heat and energy through both centralized and distributed means.
Within this network, it is possible to utilise combined heat and
power (CHP) plants along with heat from waste-to-heat and other
heat surplus sources such as industrial processes. DH has become a
network that is capable of managing individual heat flows within
urban areas that not only originate from the DH network operator
but also from third parties. This development is still slow but its
potential is strongly recommended in the 4GDH with DH providing
the network for managing all heat flows within urban areas. The
development of the 4GDH network involves rethinking this system
to include smart energy and smart thermal grids utilising a low
temperature network.
While DH has brought its activities closer to the consumer, the
same cannot be said for the food sector. Today the majority of the
food supply originates from sources around the world with sea-
sonal variation depending on global availability and local demand.
This demands large amounts of fossil fuels for transport and
growing that is further compounded by the requirement of fertil-
isers and pesticides that must be transported and later handled by
local sewage systems. Although there has been a growing prefer-
ence for organically grown food in North America and Europe, the
majority of this style of farming is still being done in developing
countries, so while perceived environmental damage is being
reduced by this consumer choice, it is actually adding significantly
to the food transport costs [4]. Urban farming has the ability to
produce organic food hyper-locally, drastically cutting down on
food miles and bringing the consumer-demanded organic pro-
duction closer to the customer.
This shift in growing potential comes at a time of change in DH
demand. Over recent years, heat demand has decreased due mostly
to the increased efficiency mitigations in the building sector, which
is applied to both new buildings and when retrofitting old build-
ings, and this trend is set to continue in line with EU aims for
reducing CO2 emissions and primary energy usage [5]. For the DH
companies, with their established grid networks, this is a challenge
as sunk costs for the grid need to be recovered despite decreasing
heat sales and a currently low power price. Together, this has
reduced the running hours of DH CHP plants and it is expected that
by 2030, energy efficiency increases will reduce DH demand by
10 TWh [6,7].
From this perspective, the development of local, urban farming
provides a new possibility to increase usage of DH. It would provide
a new customer type for DH that can be integrated in a mutually
beneficial relationship. It is possible to involve urban farming in
smart energy grids in line with the vision for 4GDH to tackle some
of the weaknesses of DH and lowering the costs for urban farming
[3]. Societal benefits also arise from this model by reducing the
ecological footprint of food production from transport costs and
pesticide and fertiliser usage, as well as providing an opportunity to
green urban areas.
Indoor urban farming requires a constant heat supply for the
growing process which can be supplied by DH within urban areas.
This provides a new and sustainable customer for DH, which as well
as providing low temperature buildings in the DH network, has the
opportunity to complement the DH system in several ways
including lowering the return temperature in the network and
providing an outlet for waste products.
2. The growth of urban farms
In the pre-industrialised, pre-globalised world, food availability
was based on the local circumstances. Depending on the local
growing conditions like climate, vegetation, cultural habits, tradi-
tions access to fertilisers and the time of the year, different dining
cultures developed. In Sweden with its harsh climate, long winter,
and short growing period the food variety is limited compared to
more southern regions. Local production was then replaced by in-
dustrial production, which shifted the supply away from the con-
sumer, similar to DH, which outsourced local furnaces. Today, the
demand for a huge variety of food to be available in all seasons has
shifted that supply even further. Consumer awareness of the
environmental and monetary costs of this shift is increasing how-
ever, and the demand for local food production is growing. This is
leading to an increase in local spaces being taken up for small scale
local farming and new technologies have changed the view of ur-
ban farming away from simple allotments to much higher output,
efficient, and scalable hydroponic farming.
In recent years, there has been a shift towards exploring old and
new methods of urban farming. Personal allotment usage has
increased and the Malmo € and Stockholm municipalities in Sweden
have endeavoured to encourage the growth of urban farming
methods. Malmo € municipality has recently invested in the coun-
try's first urban farm business incubator in a bid to create viable
business models from outdoor urban farming, bringing together
the municipality, private enterprise, and academic research from
The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences [9]. Likewise, in
2016 Gothenburg municipality initiated the Gothenburg Green-
world project to promote urban farming along with multiple
partner organisations [10]. Such moves are important for increasing
local food production, but despite the multitudes of benefits that
these programs offer, they still suffer from the issues of outdoor
farming including large land requirements for large scale pro-
ductions and perhaps more notably, the harsh realities of the
Swedish winter. In fact, even in the summertime, there are still
limitations on what can be grown in the Swedish environment and
so this does not serve to reduce the demand for more exotic
produce.
Many companies and researchers around the world have been
exploring the possibilities of indoor farming and in particular, ver-
tical hydroponic farming (VHF). Under VHF, plants are grown in-
doors using low energy LED lighting and mineral nutrient solutions
in place of soil. The nutrient-containing water is usually circulated
 M. Gentry / Energy 174 (2019) 191e197
throughout the system and recycled, or alternatively the reservoirs
are periodically emptied and refilled in a flood and drain system.
This allows plants to be grown on several levels, one over the other,
thereby greatly increasing the volume that can be grown on a given
area. Innovative vertical growing systems can increase this effi-
ciency even further, for example growing in vertical cylindrical
columns (Fig. 1) [11]. This method is now being employed around
the world in large scale greenhouse (GH) facilities outside of cities,
and on smaller scales within them. While this system of growing has
proven to be profitable on a large scale, fitting them into more
central city spaces has proved problematic due to the increase in
overhead costs. The most obvious increase in overhead costs is the
cost of land in urban versus rural environments, which can be
partially offset by vertical farming. As a result, many companies have
looked towards more creative methods of combining VHF with the
urban landscape in an effort to work with the current system to
increase efficiency and reduce costs. This can range from exploiting
unused space in old World War II bunkers under the city of London
to partnering with Whole Foods to integrate rooftop GHs onto their
supermarket buildings. In many cases however, companies starting
out with a view for hyper-local food production move to larger fa-
cilities outside of the city when scaling up their production, as was
the case with Grow-up Urban Farms in the UK. There are two ad-
vantages to urban growing, however: the proximity to the consumer
and the availability of excess heat and energy.
VHF can be performed all year round by using artificial light and
heat, basic needs that can both be supplied by local CHP plants. In
turn, this creates a sustainable customer for the CHP plant, espe-
cially with regards to electricity usage e although heat demand
may vary with the season, the vertical stacking of hydroponic farms
means that artificial lights are required all year round [12]. This
consistency in energy usage however, also translates to consistency
in food production, and VHFs can have an almost unchanging
production level throughout the year [13].
3. Costs and benefits of hydroponic farming
VHF offers a number of benefits over conventional farming. As
Fig. 1. Examples of different VHF setups. A) Nutrient film technique. LED lighting
comes from above each tray. Water is pumped through a channel where the plant roots
hang. Nutrient water flows (indicated by black arrows) continues down through the
levels and is collected in a reservoir and re-circulated back to the top of the system. B)
Drip irrigation system. Nutrient water is drip-fed down through the column. Wicking
material in the column helps to draw the water to the roots. The water that isn't
consumed by the plants flows out the bottom of the tower and is then recirculated.
This system can allow greater access to natural light or can be lit by LEDs from the side.
193
well as the societal benefits of ‘greening’ urban areas, the ability to
move farming closer to population centres and improve public
spaces, hydroponic farming can offer many improvements to
resource usage and growth efficiency [14]. A study into the yield
and resource usage of lettuce farmers in Arizona demonstrated that
hydroponic farming reduced water usage by 13 ± 2.7 times
compared to conventional farming [15]. The same study also found
that yield production was 11 ± 1.7 times greater in hydroponic
farming. Over an equal area, the water consumption for both
methods was roughly comparable, but the increased yield in that
given area, due to vertical stacking of growing beds and decreased
harvest cycle times, made hydroponic farming more efficient by
these metrics. The researchers note however, that by their findings,
hydroponic farming is not yet a fully sustainable replacement. This
comes mostly from the increased energy costs associated with
heating and, in particular in Arizona, cooling energy costs of indoor
farms, which took up 14% of total energy usage in the summer
months of July and August. As a result, energy usage in hydroponic
farming was several orders of magnitude higher than conventional
farming. Similarly, a comparative study of VHFs and GHs in Sweden,
the Netherlands, and Dubai identified that while energy usage is
more efficient in VHFs per kg of food produced, the amount of
purchased energy is much higher due to the use of solar energy in
GHs [13]. A Swedish study of the Stockholm-based Gro €nska Stad-
sodling also determined that VHFs were less efficient than GH
overall but failed to take into account the lighting requirements for
different crop types (lettuce versus basil) and used Serbian GHs as a
comparison [16]. In Sweden however, particularly north of Stock-
holm, many elements of VHFs, such as artificial lighting, are
required even in GHs, with the added disadvantage for GHs that
they are not located close to urban areas to take advantage of DH
systems [13]. Together, this highlights energy usage is a key area for
improvement in the efficiency of hydroponic farms and demon-
strates how integration to DH systems can drastically lower the
running costs of such farms and make them more economically
sustainable.
The CO2 emission savings from reduced transport that are made
possible by growing food either in or close to urban centres is
difficult to calculate precisely as it varies greatly from city to city
depending on transport links, transport type, amount of imported
food, and eating culture. Several estimations have been made,
however. A study in Seoul, South Korea, for example, calculated that
if urban farming was set up in a 51.15 km2 area around Seoul, it
would be possible to reduce CO2 emissions by 11.67 million kg
annually, equivalent to the CO2 emissions of 1155 people each year
[17]. Reports have so far not been able to reliably calculate the CO2
cost of food transportation in Sweden. One study found that
switching to Swedish-grown food made little difference on CO2
emissions, but used very low estimations for the distance travelled
that were not based on empirical data, for example, using a
maximum distance of 1000 km for imports via boat [18]. More
extensive studies have found that, in the UK for example, food
transport produced 19 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, 9 million of
which resulted from transport of food outside the UK [19]. A recent
study found that from after harvest to table, transport accounts for
approximately 36% of the total CO2 emissions for vegetables,
amounting to 0.13 kgCO2-eq/kg produce [20]. This provides a lot of
room for a reduction of CO2 emissions in the food supply chain by
moving the source closer to the customer. The amount by which
this is reduced depends greatly on the crops targeted. Being smart
about planning for crop types that come from overseas will have
the most drastic effect, especially those carried by plane, which
despite only accounting for 0.1% of vehicle kilometres, produces 11%
of food transport CO2 [19].
194 M. Gentry / Energy 174 (2019) 191e197
The major costs of operating a small indoor hydroponic farm
include water, consumables (for example, grow plugs and nutri-
ents), and electricity costs, which can be subdivided into lighting,
cooling, air flow, and water pump costs. These are detailed in
Table 1, which gives the costs of an indoor, shipping container farm
measuring 30 m2 that provides a seven-tier growing space,
providing an effective growing area of 205 m2. The costs can vary
based on the area, as indicated by the high cooling costs in the
above example in Arizona. The urban-centric farm model discussed
in this paper is of course further complicated by the high land usage
costs of locating the farm within the city limits, thereby increasing
the overhead costs. This can be slightly reduced by positioning the
farm on less desirable land or brown-field sites since land quality is
not an issue for hydroponic growing. Other solutions have been to
locate farms in unused sites such as rooftops, an elegant solution
that can provide easy integration into district heating systems. It
should also be noted that the shipping container farm in question
can be stacked five-high to produce over 1000 m2 effective growing
space in 30 m2 of land usage. Utilising unused space in urban
centres has been a key factor in the success of existing, profitable,
urban farms. Growing Underground, a hydroponic start-up located
in the UK, is an excellent example of this kind of ingenuity. Estab-
lished in 2012 with the help of crowd funding and private invest-
ment, they located their first grow space 30 m under Clapham
Common in London in unused World War II air raid bunkers. The
use of artificial LED lighting in this environment allows them to
grow a variety of produce, mainly micro-greens in approximately
2200 m2 of otherwise wasted space [21].
To use GHs in Sweden as a comparative example, labour rep-
resents the largest cost, accounting for approximately 60% of
monetary costs [22]. Energy usage makes up the second highest
cost at approximately 30% of total expenditure, although this varies
from the north to south of the country by 12%. Large-scale GHs
housed outside of the city must pay this cost, but in this regard
VHFs have a competitive advantage of reducing energy costs by
integrating with the urban DH system.
A comparative analysis of VHFs and GHs found that electricity
usage, relative to the amount of produce, was much lower in VHFs,
but also that in Sweden, the vast majority of this was from LED
usage, leading to a higher level of purchased energy input due to
the lack of availability of solar power [13]. The energy efficiency of
VHFs relative to GHs was found in this study to be highly dependent
on region. In temperate environments, where good light and water
resources are available, such as mainland Europe, the relative effi-
ciency of VHFs to GHs is low. In extreme environments however,
such as areas of water scarcity like Abu Dhabi, Dubai, or low light
conditions such as Kiruna, Sweden, the relative efficiency is much
higher. In fact, by this metric, most of Sweden, from Stockholm
northwards, lies within a medium to high relative efficiency of
VHFs to GHs because at these latitudes, many elements of VHFs
such as artificial light, must be integrated into GHs anyway to
Table 1
Resource usage and approximate costs of a 97.5 m2 shipping-container hydroponic
farm growing microgreens at 21  C over the course of one year. Values are taken
from a commercial Cropbox with an initial cost of $49,347 (cropbox.co).
Resource Usage
Electricity (KWh) 32,000 (total)
Lighting 20,000
Cooling 7800
Fans (exhaust/circulation) 1616
Pump 2600
Water (Litres) 225e450
Consumables Nutrients
Seed
Packaging
compensate for the lack of light [13]. This makes VHFs an even more
attractive option for locally grown food in Sweden.
The high energy costs are a clear barrier for producing a prof-
itable VHF. One possibility to offset the high electricity costs,
particularly for those plants that require a greater amount of light,
is to focus on higher value crops. Viable economic models have
been investigated in Greece which find that sweet basil, for
example, is still commercially viable, despite the high light re-
quirements because it has a higher value [23]. Even for this crop
type, but especially for crops such as lettuce that have a lower value,
it is important to reduce costs as much as possible to make VHFs
commercially viable. It is hard to improve on water and consumable
usage in today's efficient systems, but energy usage provides an
easy target for improving the cost-effectiveness of growing farms.
To this end, VHF and 4GDH can be integrated in a mutually bene-
ficial, circular system.
4. Linking hydroponic farming to district heating
4GDH and VHF can develop side by side. Increases in the energy
efficiency of modern buildings is reducing the heat consumption
from DH. Future development of VHFs can help to compensate for
the heat consumption reduction in the housing building stock and
create possibilities to develop DH into new areas where normal
heat demand is too low.
VHF can potentially be integrated into every 4GDH network. The
system needs low temperatures and can therefore be used to
reduce the return temperature in the DH network, thereby
increasing the efficiency of the network. In some cases, VHF can, in
a very intense production system, have a heat surplus that could be
used to increase temperatures in the DH network when located in
places far away from heat production. As all VHFs are individual
systems, as with DH, the local framework has to be investigated
how the systems can be linked to provide benefits for both sides.
This includes deciding which types of VHFs should be placed at
various points along the DH network depending on the types of
crops grown, their heat and energy requirements, and the intensity
of the production. VHFs with lower heat requirements for example
should be placed towards the end of the DH line to help lower the
return temperature.
Here we outline four methods by which hydroponic farming can
be integrated with the vision for 4GDH with a mutual beneficial
effect that aims to improve the efficiency of the DH network while
lowering costs for urban farming (Fig. 2). These are: using excess
Cost V
3377
2130
800
165
274
Fig. 2. Possibilities for integrating VHFs into the 4GDH network. 1) CO2 recirculation
100
from CHP plants to increase plant growth. 2) Biomass used to fuel reactors in CHP
200
plant. 3) Utilise excess heat from high intensity, or higher temperature VHFs to
50,000
buildings farther down the heating line. 4) Use of VHFs as low temperature buildings
2000
to reduce the return temperature. 5) Utilising excess heat from industry surplus.
 M. Gentry / Energy 174 (2019) 191e197
heat from compact growing systems to feedback into the DH
network, providing biomass for fuel use and fuel pellet production,
utilising harmful CO2 emissions from power plants to improve
plant growth, and using urban farms as a low temperature building
to reduce the return temperature.
4.1. Feeding heat back into the DH network
Early stage VHFs tend to grow leafy greens and herbs exclu-
sively. These typically require less space and simpler nutrient mixes
to grow and therefore are an easier starting point to generate a
good harvest. Because of the reduced space requirement, vertical
stacks can be made more compact, fitting in a greater amount of
effective growing space in a given area. This also increases the light
usage however, and in a working indoor farming growing basil
plants this can create a LED energy usage of approximately 16 kWh/
m2 [24]. At this rate, even given the low heat waste resulting from
LED lighting systems, such grow rooms can produce heat in excess
of the required 21  C for basil (Gro € nska Stadsodling, personal
communication). Indeed, LED cooling can be a significant cost for
VHFs [13]. This provides an opportunity for sharing heat back into
the district system or to neighbouring buildings. This becomes even
more so with higher temperature crops such as tomatoes that can
be grown at temperatures of up to 30  C.
An issue with previous DH models comes with summer flow
rates. There can be so much heat loss in the supply pipe due to low
flow rate that it is not sufficient to heat buildings at the end of the
supply line8. The suggestion has been made that, rather than
creating a bypass in the layout of the supply lines, they can instead
be looped back to heating plants or other main parts of the grid in
order to circulate sufficient warm water to buildings at the end of
the supply line. This provides another opportunity for integrating
VHFs into the DH grid. Looping the lines through strategically
placed VHFs that produce excess heat, especially in summer, can
maintain the heat of the water to those buildings on the end of the
supply line. Some local VHFs have considered sharing excess heat
with neighbouring buildings, but feeding directly back into the DH
network may be a more efficient way of maintaining the energy.
4.2. Feeding fuel back into the DH network
Further integrating urban farming and DH goes beyond heat
sharing. Harvesting crops necessarily produces waste biomass
which can be fed back into CHP plants. This can take several forms.
In the most basic, unprocessed form, raw biomass can be fed into
furnaces [25]. Use of biomass in DH in Sweden has increased
markedly over the last decade due in a large part to stimulation by
the local municipalities [26]. This provides a CO2 neutral source of
energy for CHP plants as well as dealing with waste from the VHF
efficiently. VHF would provide another such source of biomass at a
local level for CHP plants and such a system is proposed on a large
scale at the Linko €ping Plantagon plant currently in development
[27,28].
Although the proposed measures aim to utilise raw biomass in
reactors, it is also possible to store biomass in pelleted form for
periods of high energy requirement. Pellet usage has increased
significantly over recent years in Europe due it's easy processing
and cheap manufacture [29]. The majority of pellets used today are
wood pellets which come with some problems e the production of
these pellets requires large scale deforestation, mostly from the
USA, and burning them can lead to a large increase in particulates in
the air, which can be particularly problematic in urban areas [30].
Producing pellets from waste biomass from farms can replace some
of these more detrimental pellets and harmful particulate
195
emissions from compacted biomass are significantly lower than
those from wood pellets [30].
High temperature and pressure chambers can process waste
biomass via hydrothermal carbonisation (HTC) to produce carbon-
rich pellets [25]. These HTC pellets represent a more efficient form
of pelleted energy and their use should be considered as part of the
4GDH framework, whether from VHFs or a multitude of other
organic sources including conventional farming and food waste.
4.3. CO2 re-circulation
Increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration up to a limit, and
depending on the crop type, can increase plant growth significantly
[31]. Doing so not only improves crop yield, but uses the plants as a
carbon sink for harmful emissions. This re-cycling is already being
performed in large GHs around the world. At ThanetEarth in Kent,
UK, for example, CHPs that run on natural gas supply power to each
GH, with extra being sold to the national electricity grid. Heat from
the plant is directed towards a water pump that pumps the CO2 to
the GH [32]. The proposed plant at Plantagon again aims to
implement CO2 recirculation to cut emissions and increase plant
growth [27,28].
This provides an opportunity for VHFs placed close to CHP
plants. CO2 from the CHP plant can be pumped through to the farm
to help to increase crop growth. Carbon capture storage research
has been performed for natural gas based power plants for
example, but it is estimated that costs are 2e3 times higher and so
it is a less attractive investment [33]. Estimations of CO2 production
from CHP plants vary depending on the size, efficiency and fuel
type, but a reasonable estimate is 410e435 g CO2/KWHeffective [34].
Partnering a VHF with, for example, a small scale demonstration
CHP plant in Stockholm that is capable of producing approximately
1.1 MW, which can be estimated at approximately 460 kg CO2 per
hour. The average amount of CO2 in the air can be taken at 300 ppm
and increasing this to 700 ppm has been shown to have a positive
effect on plant growth in many species [29]. In fact, hydroponics
growers have found that increasing up to 1500 ppm can increase
yields by up to 30%. Although plant usage of CO2 varies greatly with
crop type, maturity, and other atmospheric conditions, a good
estimation of increasing CO2 levels in a GH environment is in the
range of 4 g CO2/m2/hour [29]. Under these conditions, a VHF
equivalent in size to GrowUp farms in the UK of approximately
1800 m2 (capable of producing 380 kg of produce per week) could
take 7.2 kg CO2 per hour from a neighbouring CHP plant. This would
account for a 1.7% reduction in CO2 emissions from the plant in
question. While this may appear to be a modest amount, it is a
useful contribution to CO2 reduction and serves only as an example
of the quantities involved. VHF farm size, and therefore CO2 usage
could be scaled alongside CHP plants accordingly and with regards
to the available space.
4.4. Lowering return temperature
DH efficiency relies partly on the difference between supply and
return temperature. Lower return temperatures can lead to lower
pumping costs and network heat loss. A key feature of the 4GDH
developments is to move towards low temperature systems,
lowering the supply temperature to 50  C and the return temper-
ature to 20  Ce25  C [3]. The use of low-heat buildings is essential
for effectively utilising the low temperature heating and further
reducing the return temperature, but it is difficult to find use cases
of buildings that require temperatures lower than 21  C [35]. Many
proposals have been made to increase the efficiency of existing
buildings, including optimising heat distribution by improving in-
ternal system components, managing the supply temperature more
196 M. Gentry / Energy 174 (2019) 191e197
efficiently, and lowering the heat demand of buildings, but few
solutions have been proposed to obtain a return temperature of
20  C or even lower. VHFs provide a useful low temperature
building type to achieve this low return temperature. Usual grow
room temperatures in urban farming vary greatly depending on the
crop type being grown. This can range from 15  C for certain lettuce
types, to highs of 30  C for tomato crops, usually with lower tem-
peratures during the night. Average temperatures for lettuce, for
example, are typically 21  C during the day and 19  C at night. This
provides a stable requirement for low temperature heating and
provides a low temperature network part that can be added to the
DH network. Demand from the VHF may change throughout the
year. While cooling may be required in summer months, during the
winter period VHFs may serve as ultra-low temperature demand
buildings, particularly at night time. Positioning of VHFs close to
CHPs can help to get the reduction in return temperature required
for the transformation from high to low temperature DH systems to
achieve the long term vision of reducing the annual average return
temperature to 20  C [35].
5. Conclusions
Using these different levels of integration between urban
farming and DH, it is possible to begin to create a circular, mutually
beneficial system wherein a close association of farming and energy
production feed into each other, increasing the efficiency of both.
For 4GDH, this creates not only an increase in efficiency via
lowering the return temperature to the desired 20  C, but provides
an increased demand for DH in either untapped areas or in areas
where, due to increased building efficiency, demand is decreasing.
For VHF, exploiting this integration with 4GDH to create econom-
ically favourable deals can serve to significantly lower the overhead
costs of growing within the urban environment. Energy re-
quirements represent a significant cost for burgeoning VHFs and
this integration would help to remove a currently challenging
barrier for the scale of urban farms. As a result of these factors, VHF
provides an interesting case to help boost three of the major factors
in 4GDH development, namely heat recycling, utilising energy from
biofuels, and providing a new low energy consumer to help lower
the return temperature.
Together, this symbiotic integration passes on benefits to the
public in the form of greening urban spaces, providing hyper-local,
higher quality food, and reduced environmental costs resulting
from food production and global food transport.
It would be too early to make exact production cost assumptions
either for where VHF will be in the future or for how it would in-
crease DH usage, but it is clear that the demand to investigate this
further is increasing and it presents very good way to improve the
environment in urban areas not only for local DH firms but also
with regards to food transport and fertiliser/pesticide costs, not
counting for the added benefit to citizens' well-being from more
nutritious food and pleasant local environment [36]. While it may
seem counter-intuitive to discuss the decreased environmental
impact of VHF by using it as a means to maintain a higher level of
CHP usage, it is important to remember that by relying on food
production from other countries and shipping them around the
world, we are not reducing energy usage on a global scale. Instead
we are simply moving and magnifying CO2 production to other
areas. The environmental cost of growing food with artificial
lighting in cities is much less than global transport costs.
Inclusion of VHF to the 4GDH can help to build a circular
economy in urban settings, with both DH and urban farming
developing together for mutual benefit. The most promising
application of this integration is likely to be the ability to lower the
return temperature of the DH network. In an ideal situation, this
relationship would lead to the farms drastically lowering their
energy costs, one of the most wasteful aspects of the system, while
at the same time improving the DH efficiency. The Plantagon GH
project in Linko € ping is an example of this nascent partnership
taking place, and hopefully will provide a model for other such
systems in the future. Although this large-scale project holds a lot
of hope for the future development of smart energy systems in
cities, the ideas presented here should be considered with partic-
ular regards to smaller, decentralised farms placed strategically
throughout the DH network to match the local urban environment.
Further explorations in this area would help to make a new form of
growing possible to complement conventional farming in Sweden,
helping to further reduce Sweden's CO2 emissions while providing
hyper-local, nutritious food from a stable source that is not so
affected by the increasingly extreme weather conditions we are
experiencing. In this way, alongside the many benefits in reducing
CO2 emissions from heat and energy production, the 4GDH
framework can help to promote environmentally responsible,
reliable, and healthier food production in Sweden.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Knut Bernotat from KTH Royal
Institute of Technology, Stockholm for helping to initiate this
project, and for informative discussions and advice relating to
district heating systems; Cyrille Gaubert, project leader of the
Stadsbruk urban farm incubator at Boltildenborg, Malmo € for help
and advice in researching urban farming methods; Peter Olsson
from Gro € nska Stadso
€dling, Stockholm for information regarding
VHF operations.
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding
agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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