OakTREE Urban Embedded Closed Cycle Greenhouses

This project will investigate a Closed Cycle Greenhouse (CCG) as an urban embedded solution for improving food and energy resilience of communities particularly those that are disadvantaged. CCGs can achieve yields up to 8 times greater than open field agriculture but require significant energy inputs to reject excess heat. Coupling them to energy networks can provide heat to the neighborhoods in which they reside reducing the CCG's energy costs and bringing the benefits of lower water consumption and emissions. The effort will assess economic viability define technical social and regulatory challenges to implementation and lay the groundwork for a Phase II demonstration. This work will develop a comprehensive model of the greenhouse coupled to a thermal microgrid that distributes energy between the CCG the community and assets like heat pumps. Commercial and publicly available tools will be used to predict yields as well as energetic and economic performance. A preliminary CCG design will be generated to assess technology and workforce requirements and associated costs. Collaboration with community-based organizations will identify social and regulatory challenges while developing strategies to overcome them. This effort is part of a larger initiative called Oakland Thermal and Renewable Electrification Enterprise to explore sustainable paradigms in distributed low-carbon energy and economic urban agriculture. OakTREE is located within the disadvantaged neighborhood of West Oakland CA. Its mission: demonstrate a self-sustaining scalable and low-cost modular platform for deployment to disadvantaged communities across the U.S. improving access to jobs healthy and reliable food supplies and renewable energy.