Net-Zero Operation Map

The food production industry is responsible for approximately 26% of global Green House Gas emissions, of which 27% result from crop production. To achieve the industry's net-zero emission target for agriculture by 2040, a transformation is required in both the farming and energy production sectors, and especially in their interaction and collaboration.

However, global pandemic, natural disasters and human conflicts put the food production at risk. A report published by London School of Economics outlines the COVID-19 pandemic shows how deeply the UK's food security is dependent on the EU, while more than 80% of farmers said they expected profits to fall in 2020\.

The farming sector is focused on increasing the productivity of food production processes by integrating automation and digitalisation into operations and using controlled indoor farming. This will enable farmers to have more granular visibility and control over the operation in real-time and harvest crops year-round as it is not weather or season dependant process. However, this requires more energy to support the operation effectively and hence, increases the operations energy cost.

On the other hand, governments Net-Zero target and corresponding policy and regulation changes is attracting significant investments in clean energy generations. Nevertheless, introduction of more renewable generation with its inherent intermittent nature will make grid balancing more complicated and costly.

Uncertainties in future of energy market caused by Brexit and COVID-19 have reduced indoor farm investors' willingness to invest and customer to advocate this approach. Our proposed project: Net-Zero Operation Map aims to promote indoor farming using the Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) system by developing a solution capable of bringing TCEA demand data and energy infrastructure data together and define a strategy to source clean and low-cost energy to improve Return on Investment and consequently enable TCEA deployment. Such data driven solution has the potential to be used for all energy demand sectors with aim to reach Net-Zero target and help them identify the best location in UK distribution networks, and achieve optimum price point and CO2 emission. It promotes local investments, high value job creation, security of supply and most importantly help the transition to Net-Zero economy.