ACE NY Releases New Report on Agrivoltaics
By Kyle Rabin, Alliance for Clean Energy New York
The stakes for clean energy and fighting climate change could not be higher. Solar power, including grid-scale and community solar projects sited on agricultural land, will play a critical role in achieving New York State's clean energy and greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.
At our annual conference last month, ACE NY released a first-of-its-kind report Agrivoltaics in New York: Framing the Opportunity, that will help guide the increasingly important conversation in New York around solar energy project development on farmland. The comprehensive report, prepared by EDR on behalf of ACE NY, considers the prevailing policy and permitting landscape and provides an overview of current and emerging agrivoltaic practices in the solar industry and techniques for combining agriculture and solar development in the state. The report also gets into various technology and research and includes three constructive case studies.
The report, informed by significant input from ACE NY member companies that are developing renewable energy projects, underscores that agrivoltaics can and should be a tool to support rural economies and keep farmland in production while still providing affordable renewable energy to ratepayers. The report reinforces that agrivoltaics can provide much-needed revenue for New York’s farmers and improve the quality of the farmland that plays host to solar projects.
“This new report serves as a foundation for awareness and advancing agrivoltaics in New York State and is intended to be a useful resource to solar project developers, policymakers, agricultural landowners and other stakeholders working to develop agrivoltaic projects in the state,” said Anne Reynolds, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. “We look forward to continuing the dialogue about the exciting opportunities for agriculture and solar projects to co-exist and complement each other, while supporting individual farmers and their communities. Fostering discourse and understanding between private industry, government and environmental groups is the core of ACE NY’s mission.”
A few of the main takeaways from the ‘Framing the Opportunity’ report are:
Acknowledging that agrivoltaics is a rapidly evolving field and recognizing the complexities and additional costs associated with agrivoltaic projects, the ACE NY report offers considerations for stakeholders involved in developing and implementing agrivoltaic projects at various scales in New York. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to renewable development, and flexibility is required for cost-effective agrivoltaics strategies appropriate for both large-scale and small-scale facilities.
Agrivoltaics presents a promising pathway to achieve New York’s clean energy goals while preserving production in agricultural lands. Continued collaboration between stakeholders, research and development, educational programs, and incentives will be crucial in realizing the vision of agriculturally compatible solar development that supports New York’s energy and agricultural needs.
To inform the direction and content of the report, ACE NY and EDR held several working sessions with ACE NY member companies. Those discussions informed the following vision statement: ACE NY supports a pathway for achieving New York State’s clean energy and decarbonization targets that includes producing solar energy on farmland in a manner that preserves and improves soil quality, provides ecosystem services, and maintains affordable electricity prices for consumers. Solar energy production is an efficient way to generate electricity in and provide new revenues to rural host communities. Agrivoltaics provides added value by maintaining the status of active agricultural lands.
To put the land area involved into perspective… Of the 35 million acres of land in New York State, about 7 million acres are farmland. The average solar development uses an estimated 5.5 acres of land per MW. Therefore, if the State’s 70 percent by 2030 renewable energy goal is met, solar development will occur on approximately 66,550 acres under the above assumptions, equating to less than 1.0% of New York's farmland. By 2040, assuming the same percentage of solar development occurs on farmland, approximately 27.5 GW will be sited on farmland, representing approximately 2.2% of total farmland in the state.
***
The full report along with a flyer can be found at aceny.org/agrivoltaics.
