>The biggest drawback of vertical farming is the high cost of the electricity required to run the large number of LEDS...One way of saving electricity is to use LED s that generate only the colours that plants require, instead of the full spectrum of plain white light.

This is a big issue and I've been unable to get good data on it. Opponents of vertical farms say that the high electrical consumption doesn't justify the reduction in energy related to travel. Proponents say that it's possible to optimize LEDs and have continuous fake "seasons" which justify the cost of transportation & refrigeration for certain species of food.

Does anyone have any good references that go into the details and provides numbers? Most of the pro-vertical farming information I've found is from companies who are investing in it so they consider the energy numbers to be a trade secret. But there must be some research group or open source team willing to publish all their data so that people can draw their own independent conclusions.