Wageningen UR Greenhouse Horticulture has, together with ThermoTech and BenK, won the Design Competition Energy-producing Greenhouse. The competition was aimed at the development of renewed concepts and designs of greenhouse cropping systems that would all the year around be completely independent of fossil energy or that might even be capable of producing a surplus of energy. The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV), Product Board for Horticulture, and LTO Greenhouse Horticulture had organized the competition in the context of their ambition to realize a sustainable greenhouse sector respected by society, and that would be independent of fossil energy sources in the foreseeable future.
An independent jury, chaired by Ruud Lubbers, former Prime Minister of The Netherlands, has on 7 March 2007 presented the jury report to the Steering Group “Greenhouse as Energy Source”. The jury considers the three selected projects as promising and capable of contributing to the ambition of the greenhouse sector to reduce the dependence on gas in the foreseeable future.
The three winning projects are:
- The ZonWindKas entered by ThermoTech.
- The ZoWaKas entered by WUR Greenhouse Horticulture:
- Closed greenhouse concept with existing components: WK (total energy), heat pump and (efficient) heat exchangers, in combination with long-term heat/cold storage in an aquifer;
- Innovative greenhouse cover
- Strongly improved efficiency of the total energy installation by reduced losses
- The ZonWinKas entered by BenK Research- en Adviesbureau voor Kastuinbouw
- Greenhouse construction with wind turbines and solar cells with storage of generated electricity.
The three winners are asked to realise their project as demo in the Innovation and Demo Centre in Bleiswijk for which a contribution of up to a maximum of € 200.000,- per winner is available. The demo’s are expected to be completed in 2007. The objective is to test and assess their technological innovation. Knowledge and experiences will in the course of 2008 become available to the horticultural sector. The jury will then decide which concept can de demonstrated at farm scale.
The submissions of the other, non winning, participants yielded promising techniques as well. The jury, as well as Nico van Ruiten, chairman of the Steering Group “Greenhosue as Energy Sounrce”, hope that the innovative ideas of these participants will also find their way into practice. Van Ruiten: ‘We will have to do our very best to activate all innovations that emerged as result of the innovation competition and make them available to the greenhouse sector.’