The importance of energy benchmarking

Derek Smith, the executive director of the Resource Innovation Institute, wants to help controlled environment agriculture receive more support. 

In partnership with the USDA, Smith and RII are providing benchmarking services to interested CEA operations to help them better understand their energy and water uses. The idea, Smith says, is to help growers be more efficient while also providing key data points to the USDA and Congress during the current farm bill cycle. Growers interested in the program must enroll by March 1 and can contract bryce@resourcesinnivation.org for more information. 

Below, Smith discusses the program, it's goals and more. This interview was edited for clarity, length and style. 

Produce Grower: Tell me about this research and how it can help growers. 

Derek Smith: It's good data that can help producers and the vendors working with the producers understand really how to optimize these unique indoor buildings that have plants as occupants as opposed to people. So we are borrowing a lot from the various building markets - meaning office and commercial buildings - that have done similar processes. And so we are brining that to the field of controlled environment ag. 

PG: What appeals to you about working the greenhouse industry specifically? 

DK: Greenhouses are huge part of the agricultural landscape and growing. They are unique environments that are challenging top optimize and there's a lot interactive affects going on between lighting that is changing throughout the day and also the way lighting affects HVAC systems and the way plant respiration affects dehumidification and all of those interconnections. The complexify, combined with the lack of data, is a fertile ground aggregate the best minds and best data to point towards more resilient growing methods.  

PG: Why is it important growers to do benchmarking? 

DK: First of all, we are funding by the USDA to support producers and understand their energy and water use. And through the process of better understanding their energy literacy and water literacy is improved. And just by virtue of that, we've seen other building owners or occupants who benchmark save five to 10% on their energy. There's that immediate return that's been well documented in other sectors. All of the greenhouse producers we've worked with [so far] in this process have been very satisfied with the process and return to use to get trends because they see that value. What we are doing is standardized and what we are doing is ultimately building a data set that producers can compare their performance against. There are no industry benchmarks - certainly not by crop or climate yet - and that's ultimately where we want to go. But you gotta start somewhere. 

We also want to create a better industry. We keep the producer's identifiable information confidential. We've had a number of legal departments scour our terms and conditions. We are not here to sell data. We are here to provide aggregate understanding to the USDA during the Farm Bill window to help them understand controlled environment agriculture, how it's using resources and how it's saving resources as well so that CEA can become a more supported and recognized part of the agricultural landscape.  

PG: Where do you see CEA as an industry currently at? 

DS: I would say that everybody seems to posture that they this figured out - the efficiency pieces, the sustainability pieces. But the reality is that everybody is challenged by growing in these environments. They make claims often based on very, very few sources that are based on a model that was done in one academic situation. What nobody has really is the ability to understand their relative performance. So what we are trying to do build the data set and the knowledge so people can do that. I also see that, through that lack of data, that inability to substantiate claims, the industry not putting its best foot forward. 

But through this data, we are validating the water savings claims that people are making - 90-plus percent savings on water relative to field farming. Those claims can be true. It's pretty exciting! You need to be doing water circularity and you need to be doing it well and that's very technical process and we are working on best practices and guidance that's peer reviewed on how you capture condensate and filter do all of the technical things associated with water circularity. But the promise is there. We are literally validating the promise of CEA through this benchmarking process. And that's the message we're going to be taking to Congress and the USDA.

Now, we do need to figure out the energy issues and have a sustainability message there as well. And that's a little more compilated. But through building a data set as an industry to standardize information, we can figure out these strategies and have clear message points about how we are part of the resilient agricultural future.