Understanding circularity and landscape experience in agrivoltaics contributes to enabling agriculture transitions and increasing public acceptance. This study examines these topics in built agrivoltaic projects reported in scientific literature, and provides recommendations for researchers, farmers, and policy makers to pay more attention to landscape experience while constructing agrivoltaic sites.
Understanding the basis on which stakeholders judge and decide on such innovations is crucial to understanding perception and adoption, especially when the potential value of an innovation is not solely on an individual level but also on a societal level. Researchers combine two theoretical lenses, the innovation diffusion theory for an individual and the social acceptance perspective for a societal lens. Through 27 semi-structured stakeholder interviews, we explore perceptions of agrivoltaics by different stakeholder types in three countries (Germany, Belgium, and Denmark) and different agrivoltaics system designs (vertical, horizontal, and as replacement of cover installations).
Using high-resolution energy and land-use modeling, researchers developed spatially explicit scenarios for reaching an economy-wide net-zero greenhouse gas target in the
western United States by 2050. Different levels of land and ocean use protections were applied to determine their effect on siting, environmental and social impacts, and energy costs. Meeting the net-zero target with stronger land and ocean use protections did not significantly alter the share of different energy generation technologies and only increased system costs by 3%, but decreased additional interstate transmission capacity by 20%. Yet, failure to avoid development in areas with high conservation value is likely to result in substantial habitat loss.
In this project, researchers placed sheep on a college campus in an effort to examine the social benefits of grazing lawnscape management. The project sought to determine if the presence of the sheep decreased stress levels among the student body; if sheep grazing events created opportunities for education about well-being and engagement with the community; and if the sheep grazing contributed to the identity of the college campus. The researchers found that the presence of the sheep provided temporary, in-the-moment stress relief for students, and the events fostered a sense of community and placemaking. Sheep grazing did not appear to have an impact on the overall campus identity.
This study explores how a matching model can be utilized for empirically planning renewable energy siting using an illustrative case study in Japan. The matching algorithm enables the matching of sites and renewable energy specifications, reflecting the true preferences of local people regarding facility siting.
In this paper, an integrated methodology is developed to determine optimum areas for Photovoltaic (PV) installations that minimize the relevant visual disturbance and satisfy spatial constraints associated with land use, as well as environmental and techno-economic siting factors. The visual disturbance due to PV installations is quantified by introducing and calculating the “Social Disturbance” (SDIS) indicator, whereas optimum locations are determined for predefined values of two siting preferences (maximum allowable PV locations—grid station distance and minimum allowable total coverage area of PV installations). Thematic maps of appropriate selected exclusion criteria are produced, followed by a cumulative weighted viewshed analysis, where the SDIS indicator is calculated. Optimum solutions are then determined by developing and employing a Genetic Algorithms (GAs) optimization process. The methodology is applied for the municipality of La Palma Del Condado in Spain for 100 different combinations of the two siting preferences. The optimization results are also employed to create a flexible and easy-to-use web-GIS application, facilitating policy-makers to choose the set of solutions that better fulfils their preferences. The GAs algorithm offers the ability to determine distinguishable, but compact, regions of optimum locations in the region, whereas the results indicate the strong dependence of the optimum areas upon the two siting preferences.
In the context of accelerated climate crisis this article investigates the energetic-political possibilities of solar energy in the Czech Republic. In the absence of solar cooperatives, the article examines residential PV installations and a ground-mounted solar mono-plantation as a terrain for possible commoning. It proposes technoecologies as a framework and tool to not only focus on what solar infrastructure brings together, but also what is left out or disarticulated in specific arrangements but can be seen as infrastructure’s productive “limits” that entail possibilities for differential inclusion, regeneration, and care. Ethnographic technoecological analysis shows how unexpected plant growth within the plantation points to multispecies refuges transforming the electric monoculture, and how electrical rewiring could connect PV arrays to households in multiple occupancy buildings (paneláky) in ways that enable new forms of sharing and joyful squandering of electricity in times of energy abundance.
The local implementation of renewable energy projects often faces opposition. The landscape transformation that comes with the transition to renewables is one of the key counter-arguments of local stakeholders. In this article, we examine the relation between research on ‘designing landscape transformations’ and ‘acceptance of renewable energy projects’; whether and how these bodies of knowledge may complement each other. The systematic literature review revealed that acceptance studies and landscape design studies describe 25 similar factors that influence acceptance. The majority of these factors are somewhat general in nature, such as economic benefits, visual impact, and aesthetics. Additionally, we found 45 unique factors in acceptance studies and sixteen unique factors in landscape design studies. Furthermore, we found differences in distribution of factors when categorizing and comparing them by means of two conceptual frameworks. Moreover, the emphasis in peer-reviewed literature differs significantly from laypersons, which is challenging the current research agenda on landscape transformation and acceptance of renewable energy. The findings and the knowledge lacunas provide clear avenues for a shared research agenda. Future research needs to examine the influence of involving landscape designers on the acceptance of renewable energy projects and the effects of more inclusive design processes on factors such as trust.
The rapid expansion of solar and wind energy projects is raising questions of energy justice. Some scholars argue that solar and wind project development could burden under-resourced communities with negative impacts such as environmental harm and reduced access to resources. Conversely, other scholars argue that project development could be a boon to under-resourced communities, providing local economic and cultural benefits. Here, we analyze the drivers of solar and wind project siting patterns in the United States and explore their potential energy justice implications. We find that siting patterns are driven primarily by technoeconomic factors, especially resource quality and access to open undeveloped spaces. These technoeconomic factors channel projects into sparsely populated rural areas and, to a lesser extent, areas with lower income levels. We avoid simplifying assumptions about the broad justice implications of these siting patterns and explore our results from multiple perspectives.
This study applies Legal Framework Analysis to identify barriers and opportunities for a comprehensive legal infrastructure to enable agrivoltaics in the U.S. e State of Massachusetts is used as a case study to understand what elements of their regulatory regime contribute to their novel agrivoltaic policy program, while also considering the surrounding federal and local government dynamics in which this state program is embedded.
The case study shows that a comprehensive legal framework for agrivoltaics should arguably include a combination of federal and state energy financing mechanisms coupled with favorable state and local land use policies. Specifically, a state-level feed-in tariff and local government allowances for mixed land use between solar and agriculture will be the key features of an enabling legal framework.
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