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Mr. Nick ten Caat
Delft University of Technology

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0 Carbon Accounting
0 Energy
0 Renewable Energy
0 Sustainable Design
0 Urban Agriculture

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Short Biography

ir. Pieter Nick ten Caat, MSc. Graduated as a Building Engineer from the Hanzehogeschool Uni. of Applied Sciences (Groningen, The Netherlands) [2014] Graduated as a Building Technologist from the Fac. of Archicture - Delft Uni. of Technology. (Delft, the Netherlands) [2018] PhD Candidate, Delft University of Technlogy, Faculty of Architecture - Dept. of Architectura Engineering & Technology | Climate Design & Sustainability [2018-2022].

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Chapter
Published: 28 January 2021 in Designing Sustainable Cities
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Amsterdam aims to bring down its carbon footprint by 55% in 2030 and by 95% in 2050. For the built environment, plotted pathways towards carbon neutrality primarily revolve around the reduction of fossil based energy demand and the transition towards renewable energy production strategies. The consumption of food resources, and its significant corresponding carbon footprints, remain up to this day outside the scope of the city’s carbon accounting. At the interface of the building sector and the agricultural sector, under-explored possibilities for synergistic and sustainable resource management come to light. For a more holistic and veracious evaluation, this research expands the carbon inventory of the urban dweller with the food category and then explores, by means of a case study, a novel strategy for the decarbonisation of the built environment: urban pig farming in Amsterdam. A theoretical farming system is added to an urban context and coupled with the existing local resource flows, allowing for new output-input links. The capacity of the farm, i.e. the maximum number of animals at any time, is determined by the daily food waste output of the neighbourhood. A comparison is drawn with a conventional method for the energy transition: photovoltaic energy, for which two common array configurations are assessed. The three scenarios are evaluated on three aspects relevant to the energy transition of the built environment: avoided carbon emissions, produced thermal energy and produced electrical energy, normalised per square meter surface area. Carbon accounting shows that an integrated pig production facility of 495 m2, holding 79 animals, can potentially reduce the carbon emissions of Kattenburg by 218 tons (−5.6%) a year, i.e. 441 kg CO2/m2. The solar farm has a net impact of 42 kg/m2/yr if the panel array configuration is based on optimal panel angle and 77 kg/m2/yr if the configuration is based on optimal ground surface area cover. This study intends to spark further discussion on urban farming by showing that an integrated pig farm can potentially avoid between 6–10 times more carbon emissions compared to a solar farm.

ACS Style

Nick Ten Caat; Nico Tillie; Martin Tenpierik. Pig Farming vs. Solar Farming: Exploring Novel Opportunities for the Energy Transition. Designing Sustainable Cities 2021, 253 -280.

AMA Style

Nick Ten Caat, Nico Tillie, Martin Tenpierik. Pig Farming vs. Solar Farming: Exploring Novel Opportunities for the Energy Transition. Designing Sustainable Cities. 2021; ():253-280.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Nick Ten Caat; Nico Tillie; Martin Tenpierik. 2021. "Pig Farming vs. Solar Farming: Exploring Novel Opportunities for the Energy Transition." Designing Sustainable Cities , no. : 253-280.

Journal article
Published: 09 January 2021 in Energies
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The municipality of Amsterdam has set stringent carbon emission reduction targets: 55% by 2030 and 95% by 2050 for the entire metropolitan area. One of the key strategies to achieve these goals entails a disconnection of all households from the natural gas supply by 2040 and connecting them to the existing city-wide heat grid. This paper aims to demonstrate the value of considering local energy potentials at the city block level by exploring the potential of a rooftop greenhouse solar collector as a renewable alternative to centralized district heating. An existing supermarket and an ATES component complete this local energy synergy. The thermal energy balance of the three urban functions were determined and integrated into hourly energy profiles to locate and quantify the simultaneous and mismatched discrepancies between energy excess and demand. The excess thermal energy extracted from one 850 m2 greenhouse can sustain up to 47 dwellings, provided it is kept under specific interior climate set points. Carbon accounting was applied to evaluate the system performance of the business-as-usual situation, the district heating option and the local system. The avoided emissions due to the substitution of natural gas by solar thermal energy do not outweigh the additional emissions consequential to the fossil-based electricity consumption of the greenhouse’s crop growing lights, but when the daily photoperiod is reduced from 16 h to 12 h, the system performs equally to the business-as-usual situation. Deactivating growth lighting completely does make this local energy solution carbon competitive with district heating. This study points out that rooftop greenhouses applied as solar collectors can be a suitable alternative energy solution to conventional district heating, but the absence of growing lights will lead to diminished agricultural yields.

ACS Style

Nick Ten Caat; Luuk Graamans; Martin Tenpierik; Andy Van Den Dobbelsteen. Towards Fossil Free Cities—A Supermarket, Greenhouse & Dwelling Integrated Energy System as an Alternative to District Heating: Amsterdam Case Study. Energies 2021, 14, 347 .

AMA Style

Nick Ten Caat, Luuk Graamans, Martin Tenpierik, Andy Van Den Dobbelsteen. Towards Fossil Free Cities—A Supermarket, Greenhouse & Dwelling Integrated Energy System as an Alternative to District Heating: Amsterdam Case Study. Energies. 2021; 14 (2):347.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Nick Ten Caat; Luuk Graamans; Martin Tenpierik; Andy Van Den Dobbelsteen. 2021. "Towards Fossil Free Cities—A Supermarket, Greenhouse & Dwelling Integrated Energy System as an Alternative to District Heating: Amsterdam Case Study." Energies 14, no. 2: 347.