For our EGRS 451 capstone project, our group was tasked with figuring out how to make LaFarms newly-constructed greenhouse carbon neutral, or minimize the carbon emissions if neutrality is not possible. This greenhouse aims to grow seedlings earlier in the colder, winter months to extend the growing season of the crops at LaFarm. This allows for increased food production and extended academic use. We discovered that there are two primary issues that need solving to properly retrofit the existing greenhouse into a carbon-neutral structure. These issues are the improvement of the greenhouse’s electricity consumption and the greenhouse’s current propane-powered heating system to be used during the colder winter months.

LaFarm was created as a tool to integrate Lafayette College’s educational curriculum and the practice of growing food through sustainable agricultural practices. The farm has evolved into an educational, community-centric resource that impacts the lives of both students and local city residents. They provide the food grown to Lafayette’s dining halls, reuse the food scraps to be composted into the soil, and contribute to community service projects to combat the local food desert issues. In addition, LaFarm allows students to transform their experiences in an educational setting and allows Lafayette classes to have tangible examples of the in-class curriculum.

LaFarm’s greenhouse was introduced to extend the growing season of crops by allowing them to start seedlings earlier than traditionally possible. The space would also be used by the community enabling the community to extend its growing season. The greenhouse’s season extension will increase the overlap between the academic year and the growing season, allowing for more student opportunities during the academic year.

 

What is a greenhouse, and why do we have it? 

A greenhouse is a season extender, meaning that it is intended to lengthen the viable growing time of a farming season. It is a structure with walls and a roof made from a transparent material like plastic or glass. Greenhouses take advantage of the greenhouse effect, which refers to when the sun heats up the air inside the greenhouse and stays trapped inside the greenhouse. The transparent material allows the sun in, and limited ventilation keeps the interior warmer in the colder months, in which certain climates can be maintained to grow plants in locations they don’t typically grow or extend the farming season well beyond the outside climate. The main reason we have one of these is that Easton, Pennsylvania’s climate can vary from very hot in the summer to very cold in the winter. A greenhouse allows us to extend our growing season by a few months.

In this project, we concluded that carbon zero for the greenhouse would not be possible as it has already been built, and to make carbon zero, it would need to be built from the design phase up to meet the carbon zero standard. We have to aim for carbon neutrality as we plan to retrofit the greenhouse to make it carbon-neutral. Making the carbon-neutral greenhouse is one of the first steps in making LaFarm carbon-neutral, which would contribute to Lafayette’s commitment to carbon-neutrality by 2035 as outlined in their Climate Action Plan 2.0.

Our project will consist of a plan to set up a commercial solar array that could create power to be put back into the grid. This would allow the solar panels to produce the energy needed to run the greenhouse during the day while also setting the excess power into the grid, crediting Lafayette for the energy they put back into the grid. They would then use these credits to counter the energy needs during low solar production days/ nights. We are also considering an alternative heating system rather than the currently installed propane air heater. Lastly, we also would like to implement a carbon buyback by planting trees to offset the carbon produced at the greenhouse.

To read about the social context of this work, please follow the link here.