Are there geothermal greenhouses in Labrador's future?

National Observer

7 hours ago

Food making its way to the southeastern Labrador coast takes a weaving journey through multiple provinces. The produce is a product of its journey: heads of lettuce and bunches of tomatoes rattle around in big trucks, bob about on two ferries and eventually land on plates, albeit often bruised and ageing.
While it's far from major cities, Roxanne Notley says Labrador isn't doomed to import produce. When she was a kid in Port Hope Simpson, near the southern end of the region, she remembers harvesting turnip greens from her family's greenhouse in her backyard. Now, as food security coordinator for NunatuKavut Community Council (NCC) — which represents about 6,000 Inuit in south and central Labrador — she's put communal greenhouses in six communities. The growing season goes from early April until October, and during that time, people have access to locally grown zucchini, swiss chard, bok choy, tomatoes and more.
But a much larger dream is sprouting, one that would lead to year-round access to locally-grown fruits and vegetables: geothermally heated greenhouses.
Geothermal energy can be harnessed in a variety of ways, but it always comes from heat generated by the Earth. Steam and hot water lie underground and the deeper you go, the hotter the sources are. That heat can be used to warm greenhouses through heat pumps or for electricity (in the latter case, steam powers turbines that generate electricity). Using geothermal energy stretches the typical timeline of a greenhouse farming season normally limited by heat generated from the sun.
This month, NCC received a nearly $160,000 boost from the government of Newfoundland and Labrador to research geothermal potential in Port Hope Simpson, Cartwright and Black Tickle.
With the funding boost from the province, which builds on previous federal support of about $230,000, studying the geothermal potential of the region can get started, said Krista Oxford, manager of energy at NCC. The council has partnered with non-profit Net-Zero Atlantic, which has experience conducting geothermal studies in Nova Scotia. There is no drilling in this phase of research, so Oxford said they're hoping they'll have preliminary findings by the fall.
Geothermal can provide year-round, carbon free heat for greenhouses. The communities of Port Hope Simpson, Cartwright and Black Tickle are now being studied to see if geothermal greenhouses are in their future.
'Now, this is starting from scratch to see if it is a potential technology that could work here, and on what scale,' said Oxford, who hopes there is enough geothermal potential to not only heat large greenhouses, but to warm homes as well.
Geothermal Greenhouses in Iceland
Warming homes and buildings, along with heating greenhouses, is exactly what's happening in Iceland, where Oxford's predecessor Regina Foley travelled during the research stages of the project.
Specifically, Foley, who now works at Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, visited the Laugaland Greenhouse farm in Borgarfjörður, which is in West Iceland. The greenhouse farm, which solely produces cucumbers, has been in operation since the 1940s.
Almost all cucumbers consumed in Iceland (where about 85 per cent of homes are heated with geothermal) are grown locally in geothermal greenhouses, explained manager Thorhallur Bjarnason.
While the first priority is to produce food for the communities where the greenhouses will (hopefully) be located, Foley said seeing a geothermal greenhouse succeed commercially provided even more motivation to push the project forward.
'I could see the potential of this being a bit of both — that ability to be able to provide for communities, to create a distribution network for clean produce, but also be an economic driver,' she said.
'You could potentially export to different communities. You could build it to the size that it made sense that you're producing enough to be able to sell and create a profit.'
Diesel reliance
By contrast with geothermal-driven Iceland, the three Labrador communities, along with 14 others, are diesel-dependent. They are not connected to the broader grid and instead rely on trucked-in fuel to heat homes and turn on lights. Because of the high cost of diesel, those in remote areas pay six to 10 times more for energy than the rest of Canada, even after the $300 to $400 million the government spends each year to subsidize diesel transport and use.
The diesel reliance of those communities means that greenhouses that don't just rely on the power of the sun (which becomes impossible once colder, darker months hit) would also depend on the expensive fossil fuel.
Having geothermal greenhouses would be 'a game changer when it comes to food security in our territory,' said Notley. Newfoundland and Labrador is the province with the highest rate of food insecurity in the country — over 30 per cent of people live in a food-insecure household, where they struggle to afford food, according to a 2024 report. Food prices in Labrador are especially high: non-profit Food First NL found that feeding a family of four on the North Coast of Labrador costs about 60 per cent more than it costs in Eastern Newfoundland.
Before COVID-19, there weren't as many people backyard gardening compared to 20 years ago, but Notley has seen that change since she stepped into her position in 2021 — the pandemic prompted people to think more about the cost and source of their food.
'When COVID happened, people started questioning where their food was coming from, and thinking, we need to take more control of our own food sources and food systems,' she said.
Now, with the greenhouses in full swing, 'it's always a competition: who can grow the biggest potato, who can grow the biggest turnip … people are doing their chickens, raising turkeys. It's just snowballing; people are seeing that we can do this. They're taking more ownership and more control over where their food is coming from.'