In addition to the obvious energy savings of growing food closer to its point of consumption (electricity is cheap to transport, potatoes are heavy) there are several other benefits that are non-intuitive and difficult to quantify.

By growing food in an artificial environment, you can exclude pests and thus save on toxic chemicals traditionally used to control their population. In addition to saving pesticide costs, this prevents poisons from entering the food chain.

In addition to saving on water, the closed irrigation cycle prevents field runoff. Fertilizer buildup in the lakes and rivers creates algae blooms which create anoxic dead zones that destroy aquatic ecosystems. In vertical farms, there is no need for overfertilization because all of it is delivered directly to the plants with no run-off, saving fertilizer and the local environment.

Assuming the technological kinks are worked out, vertical farming can have much more predictable yields than traditional farming. We overproduce food in the global north and though some of the surplus is sold overseas, much of it is wasted. Since food independence is a security issue, overproduction and maintaining latent agricultural potential makes pragmatic sense. But less ambiguity in the amount of crops lost to cold snaps, storms, locust outbreaks, and drought means less overproduction to account for those ambiguities. Less energy is used and less food goes to waste.

I don’t expect any of these benefits would be realized under capitalism, but I don’t want to burn a good idea because some grifters used it as the front of one of their schemes.