ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the existing options for the integration of renewable sources in greenhouses located in semi-arid regions where, for example, the high availability of solar radiation facilitates its use for the fulfillment of a certain percentage of the heat and/or electricity loads of greenhouses. It gives an overview of renewable energy use in greenhouses, how to achieve the energy demand and how this can be obtained from different renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar thermal, photovoltaic (PV), geothermal, and biomass energy. The chapter provides the order of magnitude of the loads, to be considered for one semi-arid, one warm and one cold location, for different growing cycles. The 2011-2020 Spanish Renewable Energy Plan (PER) highlighted biomass energy use as one of its priorities; it included an initial assessment in which the incorporation of biomass linked to intensive agriculture would be expected.
