What Happens When Vegas Tries to go Green?
Posted January 6th, 2008 by Mike.Delponte
So we all know that on average, the things we buy from the grocery store have traveled about 1,500 miles to reach us. The solution: buy local. But is building a 30 story skyscraper-turned-farm in Las Vegas the solution? Should we be growing 100 varieties of agriculture in that city if most of them do not belong in the desert? Hasn't climate change shown us that diverging from natural ecosystems is the problem, not a solution? Check out this story and decide for yourself.
Too much tech?
I was part of a group who did a sustainability assessment of the vertical farm for a class project last year... from our (admittedly rough!) calculations, the VF concept will require substantially more energy than it can generate. It's quite hard to prove, since the energy going into the VF is essentially all solar (with a proposed small addition of wind)... but if you think about the amount of sunlight necessary to grow food crops... it just isn't possible to harvest food for 50,000 people in this method while still supplying energy to operate the farm (including pumping water up several hundred feet).
That's not to mention the loss of nutrients that would occur... and thus necessary to import... unless, of course, urine recovery toilets are also installed all over Vegas. Now that would be fascinating!
Thanks!
Thanks for your comment. It's great to get this inside perspective!