
For those of us who are not fully-signed-up climate-change deniers or Net Zero sceptics, it’s been a fortnight of panic-worthy news. Wildfires in Los Angeles, 2024 confirmed as the hottest year on record, as well as the year of the highest recorded annual rise in carbon dioxide concentrations… then, of course, yesterday, the final climate-bashing Trump card.
It was no surprise. We knew what was coming but still, the blows seemed fast and hard: the new president’s signing, to roars of applause, of an executive order to withdraw from the Paris agreement; his confirmation in the inaugural address that, “We will drill, baby drill”.
The United States is already the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas, but Trump declared that he was going to “unleash” the nation to produce more.
He said. “We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, and export American energy all over the world. We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”
Trump’s America, the message was, would “save a trillion dollars” by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. Of course, there was no mention of the $38 trillion a year, which researchers have calculated climate change is on track to cost the world over the next 25 years.
If you’re reading all this, you probably don’t need to be told all this. But you might want a little positive reminder of the fact that global progress on climate continued in spite of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement during his last presidency.
You might also like to repeat to yourself, the comforting mantra, “The world is undergoing an energy transition that is unstoppable.” These, after all, are the words of UN climate chief, Simon Stiell, in response to the Trump withdrawal. Although, it’s also probably best not to contemplate what other things, in our world of potential tipping points, may be unstoppable.
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Basil in Blackford
With such troubling news around, I thought that today instead of plunging into either a doomladen, or awkwardly upbeat, analysis of what Trump’s actions mean, I would instead provide the kind of distraction we all need in the face of such big news – a Scottish story of technological innovation.
After all, we need to remind ourselves that communities, campaigners, scientists, and others continue to work towards meeting climate and other environmental goals – and all has not ended with the arrival of an oil advocate in the White House.
In my job, every week brings fresh stories of efforts to find answers – and the one I happened to look into last week was around the launch of the new Vertical Farming Innovation Centre at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) campus in Edinburgh.
For some time, it’s seemed as if vertical farming, the growing of plants on shelves indoors, has been one of those technology-fix ideas that feels partly to belong in the world of science fiction. And such farms still appear a little space age, as if designed for the moon (which, it turns out, some are).
It’s often argued that, though there are key barriers, especially cost, to the development of commercial vertical farming, this is a technology set to have an impact. So it was enlightening to see where the college and the Scottish Government which has helped fund this first vertical farm in a Scottish educational establishment, to a tune of £200,000, is going with it.
Vertical farms, I learned during my visit, can grow crops more quickly, or with higher nutritional value, and most significantly, in a world of increasing water shortages, with a tiny fraction of the water.
Dr Hadi Aliki and Vicky Allan at the SRUC’s Vertical Farming Innovation Centre (Image: Gordon Terris)
Some of the ambitions are grand. As Professor Wayne Powell, Principal and Chief Executive of SRUC, put it, vertical farming is “about rewriting the equation of life”.
“All life on the planet,” he said, “is dependent on plants. Plants are the basal element of the food chain, and through the process of photosynthesis plants convert photons into chemical energy which is stored in the plant – and this not only underpins agriculture and food but also the global economy.”
What’s different, he explained, in a vertical farm is “the way those photons are generated”, “In vertical farms,” he said, “the photons are generated from light emitting diodes, and those LED lights mimic some of the wavelengths of sunlight creating, through photosynthesis, complex carbohydrates, food molecules. Suddenly we can reimagine not only the dynamics of that equation. The types of plant you grow, how long you grow it for, are changed. It almost democratises the growth of plants.”
The physical footprint of the SRUC farm, right in the centre of Edinburgh, within the Peter Wilson building of the campus at the University of Edinburgh, is tiny.
Stacks of potted trays sat bathed in the glow of a pinkish LED light: amaranthus (grown for its high protein content), basil, jalapeno, barley. Visitors, like myself, passed through a biosecurity portal, donning lab coats and hair nets, before being taken on a tour by senior scientist Dr Hadi Aliki, who explained: “Depending on the literature, a metre-square of vertical farm can produce fifty times more than traditional farming.”
He argued: “We are experiencing drought in many parts of the world, and also there is climate change, the population is increasing and we don’t have enough space to cultivate the product for them. Vertical farming is key to filling a gap.”
What struck me was that vertical farms provide a kind of anywhere-and-nowhere space, in which any plant can be grown given the right lighting, temperature and humidity. Though we were in Blackford, Edinburgh, we could have been anywhere on the planet. We could be in Iraq, Dr Aliki’s home country, Dubai, which in 2022 created the world’s largest vertical farm, growing the same trays of plants.
What was also clear from the presentations by staff and scientists was that one of the reasons it’s considered to have potential for Scotland is our wealth of renewable energy.
Prof Powell said: “It really is a potential game-changer in terms of where you grow plants. With Scotland producing more renewable electricity than it consumes, we could reimagine the way in which that electricity could be channelled into growing plants under these conditions.”
Are vertical farms going to feed the world? It seems unlikely, but with costs declining and sustainability increasing due to the rise of renewables, it does look like a sector, and research tool, likely to grow and play a role. The SRUC is not only developing a research facility, it has also, as its staff pointed out created a teaching centre for students, to develop the human capital and skills for a new era of farming.