The Perspectief program, organized by the NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences (AES), aims to generate both economic and social impact in areas critical to the Netherlands by supporting innovative, multidisciplinary research.
About GREENCONTROL
Global population growth, climate change, resource scarcity, and market volatility are placing unprecedented pressure on agricultural food production. Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA)—including greenhouses and vertical farms—has emerged as a key contributor to global food security, offering the highest productivity per unit of resource use. However, the sector faces new challenges, such as rising energy costs and CO₂ emissions.
GREENCONTROL seeks to revolutionize CEA by shifting from traditional climate control to plant-centered control strategies. By placing the plant at the heart of operational decisions, the project aims to achieve:
- 25% energy savings
- 35% cost reduction
- Maintained or improved crop yields
This transformation will be enabled through breakthroughs in plant imaging interpretation, distributed climate sensing, and 3D crop-climate modeling. These innovations will allow precise tuning of lighting, CO₂ dosing, and airflow based on real-time plant performance and fluctuating energy prices.
TU/e’s role
The Department of the Built Environment at TU/e will play a pivotal role in this ambitious project, with a budget of €643,000, covering a PhD position, a postdoctoral researcher for 29 months, and resources for, among other things, licensing and high-performance computing. Twan van Hooff will lead Work Package 2: Microclimate Modeling, coordinating research by two PhD students (one at TU/e and one at TU Delft) and a postdoc at TU/e. Their work will focus on modeling and optimizing microclimate conditions—from the leaf level to the entire greenhouse—using advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The postdoc will further develop zero CO₂ emission scenarios for greenhouses, contributing to the project’s sustainability goals.
Collaboration and impact
The project is a collaboration between Wageningen University, TU Delft, University of Twente, and TU/e, alongside numerous industry stakeholders, including major players in the greenhouse and vertical farming sectors and the Jan Ingenhousz Institute. Dutch companies currently account for 80% of global glasshouse projects, underscoring the Netherlands’ leading role in horticultural technology.
The societal impact of GREENCONTROL is threefold:
- Increased food security with local food production year-round
- More sustainable CEA-food production thanks to strongly reduced energy use and CO2 emissions (thus carbon footprint)
- An economically strong CEA sector
“By placing the crop’s needs at the center of control strategies, we can move beyond traditional climate control and create systems that are both energy-efficient and economically viable. This project is an exciting opportunity to combine cutting-edge modeling with practical solutions for sustainable food production.”
– Twan van Hooff
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