Abstract
The life cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool for quantifying the environmental impacts of a product or service throughout its life cycle. Indoor farms can play a number of roles in agricultural production, which should be taken into account in a comparative analysis on whether to adopt open farming or indoor farming, which products to produce, or how to utilize indoor farming as a social technology option. The system boundary and functional unit must be carefully defined by considering all aspects of the indoor farm. The energy input and materials must be investigated in detail for a transparent and complete LCA. Greenhouse gases and other emissions, as well as the consumption of resources such as phosphorus, should be considered as environmental impacts originating from indoor farming. LCA research on indoor farms is greatly needed. This chapter includes a case study of LCA on existing plant factories that use either sunlight or artificial light to demonstrate the proof of concept regarding plant factories for sustainable food production.
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