As climate change accelerates and competition for land resources increases, researchers are seeking innovative solutions to balance food production with renewable energy generation. At Colorado State University, scientists are exploring agrivoltaics — the practice of growing crops beneath solar panels — as a promising approach.
Assistant Professor Jennifer Bousselot said agrivoltaics presents a sustainable way to integrate agriculture and solar production, challenging the traditional notion that these systems must remain separate.
“A lot of times, these two systems have been exclusionary,” Bousselot said. “You can’t practice both in the same place. But with combining them and sort of optimizing both systems, we’re able to generate energy and generate food in the same footprint.”
Analissa Sarno, a postdoctoral scientist at CSU, received a $225,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Institute of Food and Agriculture postdoctoral fellowship program to research agrivoltaics in Western Colorado.
“There are a lot of synergies within an agrivoltaics system that are mutually beneficial to both crop production and energy production,” Sarno said. “Some of those include increased water efficiency and keeping soil temperatures cooler.”
Sarno highlighted several additional benefits, including how plant transpiration can help cool solar panels to improve energy efficiency and how livestock can be integrated into the system for added sustainability.
“Being able to have shade where the animals can kind of retreat to is really nice,” Sarno said. “It keeps them cooler, allows them potentially less stress, which can then lead to them gaining weight faster.”
Bousselot underscored how combining agriculture with energy production addresses larger debates about land use.
“It really comes down to the fact that food and energy are two of the major building blocks of our society, and there are all kinds of controversies about mixing the two or one excluding the other,” Bousselot said. “If we can actually open the door to allowing for both to be practiced on the same space, then that’s important.”
Sarno’s research aims to focus on how agrivoltaics impact crops like Palisade peaches, chardonnay wine grapes and other fruits and vegetables.
“My studies will look at soil health — both the biological and the physical characteristics of soil and how it changes during the construction process — but then also best management practices throughout the life of a solar array,” Sarno said.
Considering that agrivoltaics is a relatively new field of study in the United States, Sarno said she anticipates running into hurdles. Some potential challenges include livestock interference, problems with energy companies, accounting for necessary farm equipment, soil damage from construction and more.
In an emailed statement, CSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences acknowledged how much research there is to be done.
“Combining energy and food production in this way gives Colorado farmers new opportunities,” the statement reads. “Much remains to be learned in this area, from the economic impact of these systems, the best way to implement agrivoltaics and the most appropriate regulations and policies to support agrivoltaics in Colorado.”
Daniel Mooney, an assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics, said agrivoltaics could be beneficial in smaller urban settings, but the feasibility of using agrivoltaics on a large commercial scale needs to be researched further.
“We need to think more about the translational piece and the scaling up piece from a business management perspective,” Mooney said. “I think we do know a lot about the technical potential of it, but is it feasible on a large scale?”
Mooney pointed out that agrivoltaics requires permanent infrastructure, which can pose commercial business management challenges, especially given the limited research on its large-scale viability.
Agrivoltaics ideally relies on coordination between the utility company, the landowner and the farmer to maximize land use and diversity revenue streams. While this model works in smaller settings, Mooney noted there’s little data on its large-scale feasibility.
“I think we’re starting to understand the relationships and trade-offs, you know, really well, but we don’t have the numbers to make a definitive conclusion,” Mooney said.
The commercial success of agrivoltaics could also depend on the location, Bousselot said. While urban areas are typically successful, the more rural areas that Sarno plans to conduct research in need to be studied.
“Because agrivoltaics is very specific to the climate that it’s being installed in, it is critical to characterize all different types of scenarios, and there isn’t much that’s known about that specific set of climate conditions that occurs in the Western slope,” Bousselot said.
Sarno said she plans to fill some of these research gaps and hopes her work can be translated to other areas as well.
“I think the project that I proposed is relatively new to our area and something that’s going to be really important and impactful to our grower community but also the food production community at large,” Sarno said. “A lot of the things that we learn from this project, we will be able to apply to other systems in the Southwest.”
Reach Chloe Waskey at science@collegian.com or on Twitter @CSUCollegian.
