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Farm Resilience

Resource Innovation Institute (RII) is a not-for-profit, public-private partnership advancing climate resilience. RII provides resource efficiency education, training and verification services, in collaboration with CEA producers, researchers, governments, utilities, and the design & construction sector.

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To drive a resource efficient agricultural future, we establish industry standards, facilitate best practices, and advocate for effective policies and utility incentives.

Resource Innovation Institute achieves its mission by focusing our work in three areas:

Baselines & Benchmarks, Policies & Programs, Standards & Best Practices.

USDA-sponsored, peer-reviewed CEA Best Practices Guides coming throughout 2023

Peer-reviewed educational reports are invaluable to producers. RII offers Best Practices Guides designed specifically for producers of food, floriculture and medicine, as well as key market actors like governments and utilities. These reports, sponsored  by partners like the USDA, are written by RII’s technical team with insights from our subject matter expert Technical Advisory Council faculty members. Topics covered include:

  • Water Circularity
  • Lighting
  • HVAC
  • Design & Construction
  • Controls & Automation
  • Utility Program Design & Market Engagement
  • Policies, Codes & Industry Standards
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RII Curriculum & Events
Our educational courses assemble trusted industry subject matter experts and feature growers of all kinds.

Efficient Yields cultivation workshops for producers. Best practices on energy, water efficiency, and productivity.  ➝

Harvesting Savings workshops for utilities & programs. Best practices on energy efficiency for indoor agriculture.  ➝

Growing Efficiency workshops for design & construction. Best practices on design and construction for horticulture.  ➝

Latest News
September 14, 2023 in Press Release

RII Joins with Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Leaders to Standardize Environmental Understanding of Modern Farming Methods

"CEA Footprint Project" will establish methodologies for measuring  agricultural energy use, water use, overall carbon footprint and other environmental factors   PORTLAND, Ore. (Sept. 14, 2023) —  Resource Innovation Institute (RII),  a not-for-profit, public-private partnership advancing climate resilience, announced today the formation of the “CEA Footprint Project,” which will bring experts together from across the industry…
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Press Releases
Blog posts
Published Stories
Events
September 14, 2023 in Blog

5 Tips to Optimize Your HVAC’s Efficiency

Controlled Environment Agriculture presents specific challenges due to the need for precise temperature and humidity control throughout various growth stages. For facility operators, the goal is to create a consistent environment that maximizes plant health, yield, and potency, all while maintaining low production costs. In both indoor and sealed greenhouse environments, proper dehumidification is critical…
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September 8, 2023 in Blog

Optimize Your CEA Lighting: 5 Tips

Whether cultivating leafy greens, succulent fruits, or vibrant cannabis flowers, understanding how to optimize a CEA lighting setup can make all the difference in achieving remarkable yields and superior crop quality. As we write in our Lighting Best Practices Guide, " is crucial to maximize your return on investment for horticultural lighting systems, as this…
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August 21, 2023 in Blog

Wasted Water is Wasted Dollars

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is intimately connected to the responsible management of our most valuable resource: water. CEA enables us to cultivate crops efficiently regardless of external factors such as weather and location. However, this advancement comes at a cost, with water usage playing a pivotal role in the equation. Water scarcity often is a…
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EDUCATION

Improve Your Efficiency With RII’s Best Practices Guides

The horticultural market has changed a lot, technology has advanced, and so have the technical terms used to describe everything. RII’s peer reviewed Best Practices Guides help growers understand the most resource efficient HVAC and lighting technologies for cannabis and controlled environment agriculture. We are here to show growers how to use efficient

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INTELLIGENCE

Resource Benchmarking, Baselines & Standards

PowerScore, our resource benchmarking platform analyzes facility-level performance on energy, emissions, water and waste. We help compare farm performance against similar peers. Cultivators and their supply chain partners can assess differences between HVAC and lighting technologies designed for cannabis cultivation.

➝ See PowerScore

POLICY & UTILITY COORDINATION

Resource Efficient Controlled Environment Agriculture

As an objective, data-driven non-profit organization, RII informs effective policies and incentives that accelerate conservation. RII has provided a trusted, stakeholder-driven voice as leading jurisdictions, including Massachusetts, California, Illinois and Colorado, have established policies and codes addressing the energy and water impacts of cannabis cultivation and controlled environment agriculture. In late 2019, RII formed its Utility Working Group on Controlled Environment Agriculture to enable power suppliers and energy efficiency program administrators to learn from each other and advance best practices on program design, savings methodologies and grower outreach.

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Featured Press
Resource Innovation Institute: Advancing Resource Efficiency to Create a Better Agricultural Future