Harvest both energy and food using agrivoltaics
Utility-scale solar installations take up a lot of space. They are usually built in rural areas where land is cheaper, and are constructed by first clearing all vegetation, grading the land, pouring cement to support the solar panels and then using herbicide to keep down plants.
Siting a large solar installation often comes down to a choice between converting natural lands or productive farmland to an industrial land use. Healthy natural ecosystems provide habitat for animals and sequester carbon in wetlands, soil, prairie grasses and trees. This should be the last choice of land to cover with solar panels.
On the other hand, in some cases, it can make environmental sense to retire farmland and convert it to large-scale solar.
For example, new state regulations in California’s Central Valley require farming counties to adapt to a decreased water budget. This has created pressure to retire up to 900,000 acres of farmland that is too dry to grow crops without irrigation and would be well suited to solar generation.
Since growing livestock feed uses about 32% of all cropland in the United States, reducing meat and dairy consumption could free up farmland to be used for solar arrays or regenerated to grow forests, wetlands and prairies.
And now there is also “agrivoltaics,” an innovative win-win solution that combines agriculture and photovoltaic arrays on the same piece of land to both generate solar energy and grow food or pollinator plants.
Two recent articles by the Climate Emergency Mobilization (CEM) Team discuss this new option.
The CEM article Agrivoltaics Combines Production of Agriculture and Solar Power describes how agrivoltaic projects work, how different arms of the federal government are supporting the concept through research and legislation, and the benefits that projects can bring to farming communities.
Determining how to intersperse solar panels with agricultural activities requires a collaboration between the solar developer and the farmer. Lower-maintenance scenarios might allow grazing around widely spaced panels or have alternate rows of native flowering plants to support pollinators. A more intensive project might have row crops or berry bushes planted between rows of panels.
The Department of Energy’s InSPIRE Project has a map of trial agrivoltaics sites across the US labeled with icons showing which farm products they are growing.
A second CEM article, Best Practices for Agrivoltaics Land-use Planning and Regulations, discusses how to bring this new concept into rural communities and which policies and regulations may be helpful. Best practices are determined in order to minimize project impacts on the environment and community.
Wind turbines on large farms in the Plains states are generally accepted by neighbors and are seen by farmers as a financial benefit rather than as a hindrance to farming. Agrivoltaics are a similar option suited to smaller farms – providing extra income for farmers and space for renewable energy while still producing food and nurturing plants.