Building up to the UN Climate Conference
It’s nearly that time of year again. No, not Halloween. Not Bonfire night either. It’s COP, of course, the annual UN climate change conference, this year being held in the UAE.
COP (which stands for ‘conference of the parties’ - you can see why they abbreviate it) may not be the highlight of your calendar, but it is closely watched as an indicator of the world’s attempts to get a grip on climate change.
This year, the UN will be producing a ‘global stocktake’, a review of where countries are “making progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement – and where they’re not”. The Paris Agreement, of 2016, bound signatories to keeping global warming below 2℃ above pre-industrial levels. The bad news is that, according to the UN’s latest predictions, we are heading for heating of around 2.5℃ by the end of the century,
In the run up to this year’s conference, the Economist is putting on its 3rd annual Sustainability Week, and they kindly invited our co-founder, Matt Chlebek, to take part in a panel on sustainable food systems.
Chris Davies, Harvest London’s other co-founder, the last time COP came to the UK - Glasgow, 2021.
Any discussion of tackling the world’s environmental challenges has to include food production. Food systems generate around a third of human-created greenhouse gas emissions, and have myriad impacts on the natural world, including water and land use, water pollution and reductions to biodiversity.
The key to understanding this issue is that it’s not just about farming. Yes, what happens on farms matters (particularly if it’s livestock farming: cows and other animals are major drivers of agricultural emissions), but other parts of the process, including producing fertilisers, clearing land and transport also play a big role. Today, food production and supply is a highly-complex, global system.
While COP looks at the global picture, we will only keep warming below 2℃ if every sector, and country, plays its part.
There is a tendency, as seen in recent announcements from the Government, to think that because the UK only contributes around 1% of global emissions, it doesn’t matter much if we delay steps toward net zero. As well as hardly being an act of global leadership, this ignores the fact that reducing emissions isn’t just an end in itself, it also creates opportunities to revolutionise our economy.
At the Economist event, Matt argued that one of the best things the UK could do to stimulate the vertical farming industry was to stick to the target to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2035.
Vertical farming can help with the environmental challenges of food production - using over 80% less water than traditional farming, no chemical pesticides, and dramatically reducing food miles - but it needs electricity to do so.
A recent study from Sweden has shown that crops grown in vertical farms can have lower emissions than equivalent produce available in shops, in large part because the country’s grid is typically made up of 90% renewable sources. The UK has improved in recent years, but less than 50% of our electricity came from zero carbon sources in 2022.
A 100% renewable grid would give vertical farmers maximum flexibility, and powerfully make the case for switching away from imports (particularly the many types of fruit and vegetables that are air freighted to the UK).
At Harvest London, we’re building what will be one of the world’s largest, and most advanced, vertical farms, in South London. If you want to be one of the first people to hear when our produce is available near you, you can join our waiting list below.
