Tell your state leaders to actively support agrivoltaics!

Around the world, agrivoltaics, the practice of co-locating food production and clean energy production with photovoltaic solar panels on agricultural sites, is going from strength to strength!

The largest-yet agrivoltaics farm in Germany recently came online, with 76 MW of clean power-generating solar capacity, plus a four-crop rotation and six mobile chicken coops.

In Switzerland, an experimental agrivoltaic orchard was recently opened, growing apples, pears, and apricots amid a data-gathering sensor web below an elevated solar array!

In Brazil, a recent study found that sugarcane yields can rise thanks to agrivoltaics, with the protective solar panels interspersed with the sugarcane causing increased water retention in the soil!

China had over 500 agrivoltaics projects in 2024, with solar panels installed over sites ranging from livestock grazing areas in Inner Mongolia to leafy vegetable-growing greenhouses on the island of Hainan to underwater sea cucumber farms in Shandong.

And in America, a first-ever national census of solar grazing found that in 2024, over 113,000 sheep grazed amid solar panels on 129,000 acres of land at over 230 sites across the United States.

A National Renewable Energy Laboratory-supported mapping project, the InSPIRE Agrivoltaics Map, now catalogs over 600 total agrivoltaic sites in the USA!

Humanity is starting to realize that we can now set up an array of solar panels above almost any form of food production. Even better, a rising tide of research is finding that agrivoltaics projects tend to bring additional benefits everywhere they’re deployed, not only providing power on the same site as farming but even boosting the food production itself. Solar panels provide shade during hot days, which both directly shields what’s below from UV radiation and improves water retention in the soil. That benefits everything from sheep to sugarcane!

State leaders should actively encourage and incentivize all forms of agrivoltaics, from solar grazing to row crops to greenhouses to aquaculture. Policymakers can accelerate this epic win-win by spreading the word and ensuring fast-acting and supportive legal, regulatory, and permitting structures!

Tell your state leaders to actively support agrivoltaics!