Tell your state leaders to support and incentivize biodiversity-boosting solar farms!

A new study by researchers from Argonne National Laboratory conducted acoustic monitoring surveys for wild bat presence on 12 “ecovoltaics” solar farms across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana, all built on former cropland and planted with wildflower seeds.

They found that bat activity (from many species) was significantly higher on the solar sites than in neighboring reference farm fields, particularly among hoary bats and big brown bats.

Notably, the U.S. Geological Survey reports that wild bats provide an estimated $3.7 billion to $53 billion of value per year in services to the U.S. agricultural industry by acting as free insect-eating pest control, plus pollinating some crops like fruit trees. Setting up a solar farm amidst farmland isn’t just producing clean energy and benefiting biodiversity, it’s helping out the surrounding crop-growing farms by sustaining pollinator and pest-control species like bats!

“Our results support a growing body of evidence showing that properly sited and managed PV facilities could benefit biodiversity.”

— Szoldatits et al., 2025.

This was the first U.S. study on bat/solar relationships, and it’s yet another drop in the rising tide of evidence that solar farms are boosting biodiversity!

One recent study (Sturchio and Knapp, 2025) found that a solar farm in Colorado appears to have directly helped the grassland ecosystem beneath the panel survive a drought by helping soil moisture retention, increasing plant growth by about 20% or more compared to open fields with no solar panels.

A Cambridge/RSPB study from England found more birds on solar farms than neighboring farmers’ fields.

In Germany, the Weesow-Willmersdorf solar farm has become a high-density breeding area for the Eurasian skylark.

And in Arizona, researchers have found that solar panels’ shielding effect can help nurse the “biocrust” of wild desert soils back to life.

The renewables revolution isn’t just much-needed abundant cheap clean energy to lower electricity bills for humans — it’s a resilience boost for agriculture and wildlife! In addition to farming-plus-solar “agrivoltaics,” wildlands-plus-solar “ecovoltaics” is looking like a scalable win-win for a warming world.

U.S. state leaders can help provide abundant clean electricity, lower electricity bills, and provide a new support to natural landscapes by supporting the build-out of solar farms. Accelerating solar power progress with supportive legal, regulatory, and permitting incentives needs to be a top priority!

Tell your state leaders to support and incentivize biodiversity-boosting solar farms!