Temperature responsive shading solution for greenhouse climate control

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The world needs to produce 50% more food by 2050 to feed a population that will reach nearly 10 billion in this time. Meanwhile arable land has decreased by 30% in the last 40 years due to the effects of urbanisation and climate change. It is essential that we increase the productivity of the arable land we have available to ensure future food security for our population.At Albotherm, we are developing greenhouse coatings that reversibly transition from transparent to white to shade crops in hot weather, allowing internal temperature regulation without electrical input. Our technology can increase light levels compared to standard shading, giving an estimated yield increase of up to 25%. For the UK this would mean up to 578,200 tonnes of extra food produced each year.Moreover, the use of fans in cooling UK greenhouses accounts for 235 million kWh of energy each year, which equates to roughly 55,000 tonnes of CO2 emitted \[4,6\]. Our technology has the potential to decrease the use of fans by 81%, saving 44,500 tonnes of CO2 and helping the horticultural industry's shift towards net-zero emissions.This is a technical feasibility project which will take our existing technology and develop a specific, customisable product for application in commercial greenhouses.Our current innovation is a coating that changes from transparent to reflective-white when heated, resulting in temperature-dependent shading. Our core IP is an active ingredient, that is added to transparent water-based coatings, to achieve reversible opacity at an engineerable transition temperature.This project will allow us to develop this prototype into a market-ready product that is gradually shading, durable and customisable to the specific heat and light requirements for optimal growth of each crop in order to improve crop yields.With these improvements to our first-generation system, we will then be able to quantify our coatings performance and durability in commercial greenhouses with our partners Vitacress, a herb producer in the UK and Flavour Fresh a berry and tomato grower in the UK. During this project, we will also collaborate with our partners Pilkington to test the durability and scale-up application capabilities for product trials.