This publication intends to inspire critical thinking about the importance of social aspects in agrisolar projects. We highlight considerations related to cultural landscapes, social acceptance, and participatory planning and offer lessons learned from case studies and a Stakeholder Engagement Plan to empower project planners and stakeholders. The intended audience for this chapter includes project planners, community developers, solar developers, researchers, landowners, and community members. While broad, the intent is to provide background, context, and considerations for these different audiences and an approach to meaningful engagement.
The aim of this research was to investigate farmers’ willingness to use agrivoltaics. An online survey among German farmers was conducted in February 2023. The dataset consists of 214 farmers. In order to answer the research aim, a factor analysis and a binary logistic regression were undertaken. The results show that 72.4% of the farmers would be willing to use agrivoltaics. The “perceived usefulness” of the technology has the strongest influence, followed by “subjective norm” and “innovativeness” of the farmer.
This paper introduces a novel heuristic framework on the acceptance dynamics of innovation diffusion processes as a key element to guide the examination of actor inertia and reorientation dynamics – depth, breadth, speed and directionality – over the diffusion of environmental innovations.
This article discusses solar panel efficiency as a function of the location’s microclimate within which it is immersed. Researchers present a model for solar panel efficiency that incorporates the influence of the panel’s microclimate, derived from first principles and validated with field observations. The model proves that PV panel efficiency is influenced by insolation, air temperature, wind speed, and relative humidity. The researchers then classified solar power production potential based on local land cover classification and found that croplands have the greatest median solar potential. Agrivoltaic systems may alleviate land competition or other spatial constraints for solar power development, creating a significant opportunity for future energy sustainability.
Agrivoltaics comprises solar energy generation and agricultural activities co-located to create multi-purpose agricultural solar energy systems. In 2021, the global agrivoltaics sector was valued at USD $3.6 billion and is projected to grow to USD $9.3 billion by 2031. Agrivoltaics projects have successfully attracted increasing investment and research demonstrating the technical, economic, and scientific rationale to advance agrivoltaics as a crucial technology to achieve net zero emissions goals. The legal framework enabling agrivoltaics development is at varying stages of maturity across different jurisdictions. This study provides the first socio-legal study of agrivoltaics development applying an energy justice framework.
As part of Berkeley Lab’s Community-Centered Solar Development (CCSD) project, this research set out to explore deep insights and perceptions from large-scale solar (LSS) stakeholders that only qualitative data can provide to identify key factors driving project success or threatened failure. Case studies, such as those utilized in this research, are uniquely adept at capturing the subjective experience of individuals and at identifying variables, structures, and interactions between stakeholders. Our case studies included 54 semi-structured interviews across 7 different LSS sites, representing a diversity of geographies, project sizes (MW), site types (i.e., greenfield, agrivoltaic, and brownfield / contaminated sites), zoning jurisdiction types, and more. In addition to local residents living in close proximity to these LSS sites, we interviewed other key stakeholders involved in the projects such as developers, decision-makers, utility representatives, landowners, and individuals from community-based organizations. The overarching aim of this case study research was two-fold: (1) to inform subsequent tasks in the CCSD research project (including an upcoming national survey of LSS neighbors), and (2) to provide insights into the following set of research questions: -What are the key positive and negative drivers leading to support and opposition to LSS projects? -To what extent do LSS projects exacerbate or mitigate perceived inequities and marginalization within hosting communities and how can those inequities be mitigated going forward? -What strategies can communities employ to align LSS development with local land-use plans and community needs and values?
In this study, researchers tested hypotheses on the extent to which varying image content representing different types of grassland use affects the visual perception and acceptance of agrivoltaics. In the before-and-after comparison, the acceptance of agrivoltaics increased significantly only for grasslands and special crops. The results suggest that attitudes towards agrivoltaics are rather stable and cannot be easily modulated by additional information.
This article uses the food–energy–water (FEW) nexus framework to delineate three different perspectives of solar energy development on farmland. The first two perspectives fit into the FEW nexus language of “trade-offs” and “synergies” respectively, arguing that solar energy development either conflicts with agricultural land use and food security or, alternatively, that the two land uses can be co-located appropriately to create agrivoltaic systems. The third perspective is a compromise, arguing that solar energy preserves farmland for future agricultural use.
In this article, the authors conducted a qualitative study revolving around three methodological approaches: a press analysis, a review of scientific literature, and fieldwork in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques district in France. Their analysis highlights four main results: (i) agrivoltaism is an innovation conceptualized in techno-scientific arenas which seek to define its agricultural viability; (ii) at the national level, the remote control by the State does not provide a framework for governance capable of involving the various actors in the fields of agriculture and energy; (iii) the deployment of agrivoltaism systems across regions engenders conflict while placing key local actors in a situation of uncertainty with regard to how best to manage this innovation; (iv) while individuals are subjected to territorialization, this paradoxically favors structural policy innovations which outline the contours of territorial governance.
This research looks at the decision factors informing private landowners’ decisions to host solar sites on their land through a case study in California. Applying land system science and agricultural decision-making theory, we find that landowner decisions to host utility scale solar sites are based on profit-maximization, water availability, visual and ecological landscape values, and agricultural land preservation ethic.
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