This seminar was held on Thursday 28th March 2024
Host: Michael Martin, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute
Summary
Michael provided a review of what LCA is, why it is used, and how it can be used to assess the sustainability of vertical farms. He shared his experience from conducting life cycle assessments with commercial vertical farms, providing results, insights, and knowledge on improving their sustainability and circularity.
Speaker Bio
Michael Martin is a Senior Researcher at IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and an Adjunct Professor in Sustainable Production and Consumption Systems at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. His current research focuses primarily on sustainable food systems where he leads the Sustainable Urban Food Lab (SUF-Lab) at IVL and KTH and works extensively with optimizing the resource efficiency and sustainability of urban and controlled environmental agriculture. He has published a number of scientific articles and chapters on the use of LCA to assess the sustainability of greenhouses and vertical farming systems and has been a Scientific Advisor for the Controlled Environment Agriculture Design Standards, the CEA Footprint Project, in addition to working with the Food and Agriculture Organisation to study the life cycle impacts of urban agriculture.
About IVL
Founded jointly by the Swedish government and the Swedish business sector in 1966, IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute is Sweden’s first and oldest environmental research institute. Managed as a limited company, it is owned by SIVL Foundation for IVL (SIVL). The board of directors are appointed in equal parts by the Swedish government and the business sector.
IVL works with applied research and consultancy to promote ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable growth within business and society at large. Their research is funded partly by the Swedish government and the Swedish business sector, and partly through appropriations granted by national and international research bodies.
For more information about this seminar please contact Ramin.Ebrahimnejad@huttonltd.com