Entries by Carl Berntsen

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Farmland Solar Policy Design Toolkit

This toolkit is intended for state and municipal lawmakers, farmers, and researchers hoping to improve or better understand their community’s farmland solar policies. It identifies key areas of state law affecting how much and what kind of solar development occurs on farmland, as well as farmers’ access to clean energy.

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Farmland Solar Policy Design Toolkit

This toolkit is intended for state and municipal lawmakers, farmers, and researchers hoping to improve or better understand their community’s farmland solar policies. It identifies key areas of state law affecting how much and what kind of solar development occurs on farmland, as well as farmers’ access to clean energy.

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American Solar Grazing Association, Inc. Sheep Grazing Contract Template – Option 2

This agreement template example, from the American Solar Grazing Association, Inc., is an example of a limited vegetation maintenance agreement between a solar site manager and a sheep farmer. The example includes terms of the agreement between parties and details regarding obligations under various circumstances for the duration of the contract.

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The Social Dimensions of a Technological Innovation: Agrivoltaics in the U.S.

This thesis lays the groundwork for the broader realization of agrivoltaics by identifying the socio-political opportunities and barriers to development. Combining theoretical frameworks on technology diffusion and social acceptance of renewable energy with expert perspectives, this work seeks to understand, address, and accommodate the role of society and policy in combining solar energy and food systems. Three empirical studies are presented that first investigate the impediments to farmer adoption of the technology, then explore the challenges to development from the perspective of solar industry professionals, and conclude by outlining a comprehensive legal framework for agrivoltaics in the U.S. The findings identify the key socio-political opportunities for agrivoltaics include: the retention of agricultural land and rural interests, and increased local level acceptance of solar development. The key barriers include: ensuring long term agricultural productivity is not compromised, and subnational localized zoning strategies.

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The politics of negative emissions technologies and decarbonization in rural communities

This article examines prospective challenges and opportunities for scaling up negative emissions technologies (NETs) through examining how decarbonization practices are evolving in one particular landscape: the Imperial Valley in southeast California, a desert landscape engineered for industrial agriculture.

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Surveying the Solar Power Gap: Assessing the Spatial Distribution of Emerging Photovoltaic Solar Adoption in the State of Georgia, U.S.A.

Despite a global push in the development and implementation of widespread alternative energy use, significant disparities exist across given nation-states. These disparities reflect both technical and economic factors, as well as the social, political, and ecological gaps between how communities see energy development and national/global policy goals. Known as the “local-national gap”, many nations struggle with fostering meaningful conversations about the role of alternative energy technologies within communities. Mitigation of this problem first requires understanding the distribution of existing alternative energy technologies at the local level of policymaking.