Why is nobody building greenhouse towers?

Why is nobody building greenhouse towers?

>build towers that produce ethanol
>cheap, clean, reliable energy for everyone

Seems quite simple, why is there no serious approach for it?

I have found in the internet that a square meter of greenhouse costs around 20 dollars. Lets say building it in a tower structure is significantly more expensive, so lets say 50 dollars. that puts the square kilometre price at 50.000 US-$. So building 1 million square kilometres of ethanol producing greenhouse costs only 50 billion. 1 km2 allows for around 500.000 litres of ethanol production per year, so we are speaking about 500 billion litres a year. lets say the towers have an operating time of 20 years before they need full replacement. then you could generate 10 trillion litres for the price of 50 billion US-$, or 0,05 cents per litre. That does not include operating cost yet. Lets assume those are very high and say they are 10 cents per litre. Thats still just 10,05 cents per litre of ethanol. A barrel would cost around 16 US-$. So even if we double all the cost we would still end up with 32 US-$, which is still significantly under oil prices.

So why isnt it happening?

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infrastructure that is already inplace

>So even if we double all the cost we would still end up with 32 US-$, which is still significantly under oil prices.
Isn't the more important question the energy density? If you only get a quarter of the energy from your barrel of ethanol then hey, maybe there isn't such a big price difference. I'm not saying you have a bad idea, but maybe you should look into this too.

Consider the plants on the lower floors near the middle of the structure. A majority of those plants aren't receiving sunlight.

By your logic, a 200 meter tall building that has a footprint of a meter squared costs 10000 dollars. Bullshit it's 50 per cubed meter.

How do you support its weight and the weight of the irrigation system used the water the plants? More structural support reduces sunlight penetration and increases costs.

>hurr, durr why don't we coat all the roads in solar panels to save the planet
Imagine your a critic and criticise your own work. 90% of ideas are dead on arrival.

>50x1000x1000=50000
Not to mention that you arent accounting the cost of the lot and building a vertical greenhouse tower is vastly more expensive than 50 bucks a square... and even then oil is LITERALLY free, you just have to pump it from the ground. Im sure ethanol will become a viable alternative 100 or 200 years down the line, but atm the cost-effectiveness is not even close.

Oh I don't know maybe the fact that solar the greenhouse won't magically increase solar flux or the ridiculously low solar conversion efficiency of pplants. So about 9.125E9 MJ of solar energy are available per year when you average out night and what not. Your 500,000 liters of ethanol translates to 3.333E9 MJ.

So you get a fucking ridiculous solar to chemical energy conversion efficiency of 36%. Heck it's hard to even get solar cells that efficient. Solar cells kick plants asses when it comes to solar conversion efficiency.

Second making biofuels or any sort of fuels for feeding combustion engines is fucking stupid. Because we'd still be burning shit, we still have to deal with NOx air pollution which is bad for people. Corrodes your damn lungs

>So even if we double all the cost we would still end up with 32 US-$, which is still significantly under oil prices.
Because there are more costs which you haven't factored in, the real world, economics and running a business isn't that simple. Good wholesome agribusinesses like Monsanto need your support to help make things like this economically viable. Here's what you need to do.

1: support GM
2: support corporate America, pro-business politics and encourage others to do the same by appealing to whatever makes them tick
3: go to college and study, chemical engineering and cellular biochemistry are in demand, devote yourself to this and you will start to enjoy it, you will impress your mother, everyone respects a right proper scientist
4: get involved with the scientific community, you accomplish things by first humbling yourself and learning from others
5: all knowledge starts with God, don't go to church because you need that time to study but remember God is watching your every move and you must carry out the task set for you

>5' 10" average size of a man

Chinese man?

>Why is nobody building greenhouse towers?
>So why isn't it happening?

Funding for a feasibility study just hasn't come in for most people. There is as least one I know of, but my googling is being sabotaged by a shitload of CGI artists and their shitty CGI greenhouse towers/buildings/skyscrapers/shitturds.

A proper design would simply add on or repurpose the first 10 feet of the sunny side of current buildings for greenhouse use (rooftops as well). Anything deeper than that won't have proper sunlight to grow worthwhile food crops.

t. farmer

>trying out to be a smartass
>spits out such a retarded bullshit makes everybody think hes retarded
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_human_height_worldwide
how does it feel to be born retarded? 100% reported in Germany and average is 178/5'10'' its 177.4cm 5'91/2 in US.

>t. manlet

>184 cm
>manlet
>t. manlet

>unironically resorting to memes in the face of facts
consider picrelated

>Lets say
>Lets assume
That's your first problems, numbers matter.
Anyway it's just an expensive greenhouse, plus there is no sun, which kind of defeats the very purpose of a greenhouse.
So let's stick with horizontal greenhouses.
You need more space but you don't build them in middle of a city and just transport the goods there.

Are you okay? I'd ask if you needed to lay down, but it seems you're already pretty low to begin with.

>implying that building 10 floors of greenhouse is equivalent (in terms of output) to 10 flat greenhouses
>not realising that the parts in the middle/bottom will be overshadowed

>implying that stacking greenhouses is only 2.5 times more costly than just planting it on the ground
>not taking into account the need for heavy bulding machinery, stronger structural materials, more robust foundation, and the constant need to power multiple water pumps

>not taking into account the significantly lower energy density of ethanol compared to gasoline

>not comparing the output of this to Concentrated Solar of equivalent area/cost

>being a maximum brainlet

Open crop fields are cheap.

Greenhouse towers are expensive.

We have to make it profitable.

If it become profitable Shlomo Sheckelstein will become willing to fund it.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE CONSTRUCTION LEAKS GASSES!
WE ALREADY HAVE TO MUCH GREENHOUSE GAS IN THE AIR

If you drastically increase the oil supply, the price will go down.

>manlet memes
Good thing I get laid anyway.

That's a dumb response. These can be built atop existing structures in an urban environment, or free-standing elsewhere. The real reason is that the petroleum industry has a stranglehold on the fuel sector, to a degree that all cars are capable of running on 100% ethanol but performing the automobile's computer modifications is illegal in the US.

>illegal in the US

Source?

So I want to answer some points that have been brought up:

>Some plants wont get sufficient light

I am pretty sure this problem can be solves relatively easily through a combination of clever architecture and mirrors. In the worst case, the most inner zones are going to remain without crop, which rises the cost somewhat.

>Oil is free you just need to pump it up

Well, oil in the long run is not free because it causes climate change. Also, most oil is concentrated in certain regions which makes it politically complicated. You literally need to fight wars over it. Ethanol is cheap, can be grown almost everywhere, renewable, safe and clean.

>Ethanol has no good energy density.

Ethanol has around 66% of the energy density of most oil products. That's good enough.

>Cars running on Ethanol still suck

Well, I'm not advocating against electric cars. You could also build big plants that produce electricity. And central heating of living houses can also be done by Ethanol. Heating a house with electricity though is very expensive.

>Solar cells are more efficient

Solar cells are also, despite the chinese government pouring dozens of billions of subsidies into the industry, way too expensive and they are also not suitable for all regions and generally not very reliable.

>The structure would be expensive to build

Well, considering the fact that my operating cost is 10 cents, and my fixed costs (building the towers) are only 0,5 cents, you could inflate the fixed costs by as much 20-fold and still end up with a price of 20 cent per litre, which is 32 US-$ per barrel.

Also note the towers are not going to be build in the middle of expensive urban centers, they are going to be build in the farming areas where real estate is ridiculously cheap.

The problems is still see are:

* harvesting the crop from the towers might be very complicated and costly

* people might argue the towers are ugly and ruin the countryside (in germany this is the main argument against Wind turbines, and a lot of wind turbines are not being build because of it)

>clever architecture and mirrors

Using glass structures that light can pass through is the best you can do. Adding mirrors means that there's shadow being cast on something else below the mirror, thus you are limited on how many mirrors there are and where mirrors can be placed. Reflecting ambient light is the best use of a mirror or as the case may be a reflector that is merely flat white in color. Meaning, everything is glass and if it isn't glass, it is flat white.

>clever architecture and mirrors

There is only a certain power of sunlight hitting a certain area. Mirrors cast shadows.

>Solar cells are expensive and unreliable

Cells are a meme - this is the real solar energy technology:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power

>my operating costs are 10 cents per litre

And how was that calculated? Did you take into account the cost of pumping the water? Of the fertilizers, or delivering fresh soil and replacing it? Of the pesticides, insecticides?

so i constructed how the ground floor would look like.

black: 1x1m of weight supporting structure every 10 metres

white: 1x1m of light tunnel that allows for equal light distribution throughout the tunnel every 10 metre.

red: central operating space (room for elevators, fertilizers, water pumps, etc.)

green: crops

the ground floor would hold ca. 122.500 square metres of crops.

all the additional floors will be build 20% smaller than the underlying floor for easier weight distribution

so a 5 floor building will hold around 500.000m2 of crops.

forgot the pic of course

*150.000 metres of crops sorry

I've played Minecraft too. Sorry but it's not an accurate simulation software.