Life cycle assessment of an urban vertical farm benchmark from construction to dismantling and recycling

• Evaluated the LCA of an integrated urban vertical farm with functions of planting, office, vending, and storage. • The life cycle GWP of the urban vertical farm benchmark and the share of each phase were obtained. • The carbon emissions payback for urban vertical farms, encompassing all phases from construction to demolition, is provided. • Despite the high GWP values of urban vertical farms compared to open field farming, carbon emissions can still be reduced by placing wind turbines. Urban Vertical Farming helps mitigate problems associated with limited crop growth due to unstable land and climate conditions. It is expected that, under suitable control, such as soilless technology, environmental control systems, automated management, and other core working principles, food crops can be grown continuously without being affected by seasonal variations. However, the amount of energy required to create optimum cultivation conditions can lead to high operating costs (especially in Europe) and other environmental impacts. In this study, we discuss those issues in relation to the construction, operation and management of an urban vertical farm, via life cycle analyses. The study is conducted with SimaPro, considering scenarios that combine the supply of building materials, building design life and transportation distance of the products, while exploring ways to reduce carbon emissions through wind energy harvesting. The results obtained indicate that the investigated urban vertical farm yields a GWP of 5.43 kg CO 2 eq per kilogram of lettuce under the current grid structure, which is 9-14 times higher than that of traditional open field farming. However, the main reason for the exponential increase in GWP is the power consumption of artificial lighting and HVAC systems. Among these, 3.61% of life-cycle carbon emissions can be saved by recycling waste lettuce at the use and production phase. The dismantling and recycling phase can recover 4.06% of the life-cycle carbon emissions by recycling materials. Furthermore, the study results indicated that the clean energy produced by wind turbines can reduce carbon emissions by up to 2.39%.