A new partnership is going to investigate using existing wind farms to power and heat greenhouses in Southwestern Ontario.
The University of Windsor is teaming up with the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers (OGVG) and Kruger Energy on the HIGH Energy project, short for the Hydrogen Integrated Greenhouse Horticultural Energy project.
The new joint venture will study using wind turbines to generate clean electricity and hydrogen for use in the area's multi-billion-dollar greenhouse sector.
Aaron Coristine, the OGVG's manager of science, regulatory affairs and government relations, notes something like this has never been done before and the opportunity to reduce CO2 emissions using blended fuels and hydrogen would certainly be beneficial for the region.
"I think it just shows our drive to be champions in sustainable farming, energy efficiency and really be a leader in contributing to building a strong sustainable, resilient domestic food supply system," he says.
Coristine says this is about leveraging current infrastructure investments and giving them another avenue to be utilized.
"Essentially you are using renewable energy to further create more renewable energy and so you're carbon footprint to create this energy is so low. It can be so efficient and ultimately is what we hope our study verifies and then we can come up with the next steps," he says.
(Photo courtesy of istockphoto.com/RuudMorijn)
The long-term portion of the project proposes building a commercial facility that takes locally captured wind energy, turning it into electricity and hydrogen for greenhouses that grow tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, strawberries and other crops. The first step of the project is to do the economic and regulatory modeling to make the business case for the venture.
Kruger Energy currently generates 200 megawatts of wind energy in Southwestern Ontario, which is enough to power 60,000 homes, or hundreds to thousands of greenhouse acres depending on crop and growing practice.
Southwestern Ontario boasts the highest concentration of greenhouses in North America.