Tell your state leaders that solar farms can benefit pollinators!

A new study has calculated that solar farms in Great Britain can serve as nurturing refuges for red-tailed bumblebees (Bombus lapidarius), boosting populations in the surrounding landscape! The researchers found that Britain’s existing 1,042 solar farms could provide safe havens for bumblebees amidst surrounding land-use change. Notably, their modeling calculated that solar farms planted with wildflowers had approximately 120% higher bumblebee densities than those with plain turf grass.

“Solar farms could be considered as an emerging tool in conservation to help protect populations of bumblebees into the future…

Strategic siting of solar farms could be considered to connect bumblebee habitats or provide bumblebee resources where they are otherwise limited.”

— Professor Alona Armstrong, coauthor of the new study.

This is yet another great example of renewables/wildlife coexistence! Though counterintuitive to many, case study after case study is finding that adding solar panels on farmland (a great way for farmers to earn reliable income in a time of wacky weather!) means more wildflowers, pollinators, and birds. It’s even starting to look like adding solar farms to pristine wild desert and dry grassland ecosystem is also good for biodiversity, creating little oases of shade and windbreaks that lead to higher water retention in the soil below plus more plants and microbes!

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.

Wildlands-plus-solar “ecovoltaics” is looking like a scalable win-win for a warming world. By supporting the build-out of solar farms, U.S. state leaders can help provide abundant clean electricity, lower electricity bills in a time of rampant cost-of-living inflation, and provide a new support to natural landscapes. It’s more important than ever to prioritize accelerating solar power progress with maximally supportive legal, regulatory, and permitting incentives!

Tell your state leaders that solar farms can benefit pollinators!