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Renewable-fuelled plant factories ensure large-scale food supply but require low-carbon transition for environmental gains

Nature Food volume 6, pages 968–982 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Renewable-fuelled plant factories (RFPFs) offer great promise for resilient food production, yet assessing their supply potential and environmental impacts is crucial for wider adoption. Here we conduct a multidimensional geospatial analysis to devise RFPF deployment schemes that aim to meet the population’s dietary vegetable demand in China’s 369 city-level regions. Results indicate that RFPFs provide multifaceted benefits, particularly in a cross-city scenario that ensures a sufficient supply for all regions, saves 51,390 km2 of cropland and maintains an affordable cost at 5.88 Chinese Yuan kg−1. Nevertheless, compared with conventional methods, RFPFs increase greenhouse gas emissions by 1.99–2.55-fold, with the majority being embodied in the manufacturing of power modules and facilities. Adopting a low-carbon transition pathway mitigates these emissions by approximately 70%, enabling RFPFs to achieve environmental gains. These results show the potential of RFPFs to innovate food production systems while underscoring low-carbon transition as a condition for their large-scale implementation.

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Fig. 1: Feasible land for the deployment of RFPFs in China.
Fig. 2: Vegetable production potential by RFPFs and vegetable demand in China’s city-level regions.
Fig. 3: Vegetable supply by RFPFs in the two scenarios.
Fig. 4: The greenhouse gas emissions and pollutant reduction of the RFPF deployment schemes.
Fig. 5: Greenhouse gas mitigation effects of the measures of low-carbon transition.
Fig. 6: Sensitivity analysis results.

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Data availability

The data generated or analysed during this study are included in the Article. Supplementary Table 1 summarises the geographic information for spatial analysis in this study, Supplementary Tables 3–14 list the key parameters for the vegetable supply–demand model and Supplementary Tables 15 and 16 present the parameters for estimating greenhouse gas and pollutant emissions. The transportation distance data are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17008362 (ref. 105). Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The code developed in this study is available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17008362 (ref. 105).

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72304072; C.C.) and the Agilent Applications and Core Technology-University Research Grant (5108; P.W.). The work described in this paper was conducted in part by C.C., JC STEM Early Career Research Fellow, supported by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Yihan Wang

  2. Institute of Carbon Neutrality and Green Development, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Chao Wang & Peng Wang

  3. Department of Urban Planning and Design, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Chen Chen

  4. School of Geography and Remote Sensing, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China

    Chen Chen

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Y.W., C.C. and P.W. co-designed the study. Y.W., C.W. and C.C. contributed to data collection and processing. Y.W. conducted technical analyses and interpretation of results. Y.W. and C.C. wrote the paper, and P.W. revised the paper.

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Correspondence to Chen Chen or Peng Wang.

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Wang, Y., Wang, C., Chen, C. et al. Renewable-fuelled plant factories ensure large-scale food supply but require low-carbon transition for environmental gains. Nat Food 6, 968–982 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01240-w

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