**1. Introduction**

The poultry industry is a significant economic part, supplying energy, meat, eggs and livelihoods to an increasing human population. Nevertheless, it is highly exposed to global-scale warming and climate change caused by human activities [1]. The direct impacts on poultry farming involve the growth, breeding, health and welfare whereas the indirect influences are owing to the global warming on the productivity of forage crops, pastures and feeds [2]. Poultry farming makes up a large proportion of the world's entire requirement for family livestock, meanwhile,

the global population is going up continuously, which results in a growth in the need for poultry providing over the upcoming decades. To be more specific, compared with 2010, the consumption of poultry meat is anticipated to enhance from 330 to 455 million tons per annum in 2050 [3].

Traditional farming solutions are not the capability of fulfilling this demand, in particular for the broiler breeding. This is because the indoor temperature needs to be controlled with accuracy for achieving optimum growth [4, 5]. And also, the health status of the chicken extremely depends on the ambient temperature inside the poultry shed. In the heating season, it is necessary to sustain indoor air temperature in the range of 21–32°C for broiler birds, while in the cooling season, it should avoid the overheating and heat stress on chicken. What is more, there is major pollutant gas including carbon dioxide (CO2) and ammonia (NH3) emitted from poultry facilities that must be maintained underneath the critical concentration levels of 2500 ppm and 25 ppm, respectively [6].

Although, indoor ambient temperature and harmful gases emission should be controlled effectively, the energy consumption and overall expenses still need to be decreased. Energy is utilized for environmental control including lighting, ventilation cooling and heating, preparation and distribution of feed as well as manure management [7, 8]. Specifically, broiler breeding farming for indoor temperature control makes up 96.3% and 75.5% of the entire thermal and electrical energy demands, respectively. Meanwhile, in laying hen sheds, the power output for indoor condition control and ventilation demand is 58.9% and 43.7%, respectively [9, 10]. Additionally, the electricity expense involving heating, lighting, ventilation and cooling is the biggest part for poultry farmers [11].

Water is a vital input for poultry meat and eggs production and plays an important role in guaranteeing chicken health. The traditional water sources, such as rivers, lakes, rainfall, aquifers and snowmelts are not sufficient to fulfill the minimum water demands. Currently, 61% fresh water is obtained from seawater desalination processes, 21% from brackish water as well as 8% from river water. In general, 90% of fresh water is attained from these three sources and the remaining is extracted from brine, wastewater and other sources. Desalination is regularly utilized to produce freshwater eliminating salts, pollutants and minerals from brackish water [12]. However, desalination technology requires considerably higher energy, cost and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions compared to traditional water treatment approaches. Currently, two mature technological solutions are employed include thermal and membrane approaches. It is found that the thermal-based approach has much higher energy-intensive compared to membrane-based ones [13, 14]. Specifically, Ahmed et al. [15] found that the desalination capacity across the globe based on the membrane desalination method makes up about 73% whereas the thermal-based solutions account for merely 27% until 2016. Moreover, the membrane approaches require high operating pressure ranging from 55 to 70 bar, by comparison, the normal pressure for the brackish water desalination varies from 15 to 30 bar [16]. Integrating the desalination technologies with renewable energy sources have the potential to produce fresh water for future development. This mainly includes three merits, namely, energy sustainability, future fresh water sustainability and environmental sustainability. Renewable energy technologies like solar photovoltaic (PV), solar photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) and geothermal heat pumps are state-of-the-art and could become feasible and economically promising for different areas. Nevertheless, when the technologies continue to enhance, the fresh water becomes scarce and fossil fuel energy price increases, thereby renewable energy desalination suits more viable economically. Additionally, the CO2 emission is the major factor by the operation of desalination processes. It is reported [17, 18] that the CO2 emission is over 1500% and it is predictable to

#### *Energy, Economic and Environmental (3E) Assessments on Hybrid Renewable Energy... DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102025*

increase to 2200% by 2040. Herein, the efficiency enhancement of water and electricity, is vital to regulate CO2 emission to protect the environment.

Hence, to ensure energy sustainable development, decrease cost as well as GHG emission in poultry farming, sustainable energy development in poultry production and reduce cost and GHG emissions, there is a strong incentive to explore energy conservation and deployment of renewable energy technologies for improving energy conversion efficiency for heating and cooling and replacing the utilization of fuel. In comparison with conventional oil and gas energy resources, renewable energy technology shows massive potential owing to its excellent quantity and environmental friendliness.

To be more specific, solar energy technologies including photovoltaic (PV), solar thermal collector and solar photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) are the ideal solutions for warming poultry shed. This is because they are both inexpensive and efficient to operate and could solve fossil fuel-oriented environmental matters, compared to traditional energy sources such as gas and oil. Gad et al. [19] built a solar energy heating system for poultry shed to assess the energy efficiency and system cost. It is observed that the thermal and electrical efficiencies could achieve 71.6% and 12.5%, respectively. The electricity cost of renewable technology is about 1.12 US \$/kg which is less compared to 1.46 US \$/kg of the conventional power operating system. Mirzaee Ghaleh et al. [20] built a solar thermal collector system for heating a poultry shed in Iran, and demonstrated that the system could fulfill at least 20% of the energy demand in the heating season. Bazen et al. [21] carried out an economic evaluation of a solar PV system for Tennessee's poultry farm in USA, and concluded that the effects of initial cost, installed expense and tax credit on the net present value could reach 35%, 10.6% and 15%, respectively. Fawaza et al. [22] performed a techno-economic assessment of a solar heating system for broiler breeding in Lebanon. The results illustrated that the hybrid system can achieve 74% of energysaving and overlay 84% of heating load demand in the heating season. Moreover, annual operating cost saving is approximately \$3389, resulting in a 4.6-year' payback period. Chen and Sheng [23] proposed a solar thermal vacuum tube collector system for warming poultry shed, and found that the system can save around 148.6 kg of CO2 emissions.

Geothermal energy is a potential heat source to provide space heating for a chicken shed owing to the comparatively constant temperature of the soil. And also it has minimal maintenance during the long operation period. As a result, the influences of the GHP poultry shed on indoor temperature control and energy efficiency assessment are investigated in some case studies [24, 25]. Specifically, Kharseh and Nordell [24] developed an integrated solar-geothermal system for evaluating the energy demand for a poultry shed in Syria. It is concluded that this hybrid unit can generate 92 MWh of heating and 13 MWh of cooling, respectively. Choi et al. [25] applied a GHP unit for heating a broiler in Korea. It is demonstrated that the maximum and minimum indoor temperatures could be maintained in the range of 26.4°C-33.5°C and 22.4°C-30.9°C, respectively.

Green poultry shed is a wise choice for resolving basic and applied problems in connection with livestock production in an economic and ecological way. There is still currently a research gap in the area of investigating the energy, economic and environmental (3E) evaluation to study conversion efficiency, economic and GHG emission elements for design and performance estimation of the renewable energy unit in poultry shed. The major novelty of this work is to utilize the technoeconomic evaluation approach to predict the annual electrical and thermal energy output and calculate system electrical and thermal energy cost savings, net present value, payback period and GHG emission.
