Given the volatility of both markets and the climate these days, most farmers are to diversify their revenue streams. One possible avenue is agrovoltaics, where agriculture and solar energy generation coexist on the same land leased from farmers and/or landowners.
There are different ways to implement agrovoltaics, but all of them involve more than simply placing a ground‐mounted solar photovoltaic (PV) system on a patch of land, says Zoe Berkery, COO of clean energy investor CleanCapital.
CleanCapital focuses specifically on the middle market of solar that sits between residential- and utility-scale projects. Also called the commercial/industrial sector, it includes installations such as a rooftop array on a commercial building or panels atop a carport at the local supermarket.
Agrovoltaics, in which solar arrays and farming operations exist side by side, fit into this middle market segment, as projects can give farmers an additional revenue stream.
“Given the volatility of farming, commodity markets, and climate change, agrovoltaics offers them a consistent monthly or quarterly revenue in their pockets,” notes Berkery.
Below, she discusses why agrovoltaics is an investible asset and how the firm is integrating it into current and future solar projects.
AFN: Tell us a bit more about CleanCapital
Zoe Berkery (ZB): At the highest level, we’re an independent power producer that’s focused on the distributed space—the more commercial market of solar. It’s the type and size of project that would be on top of a hospital or university.
That being said, we do have quite a number of utility-scale [projects] in our pipeline, and some of our assets under management meet that definition of just larger scale. But for the most part, our bread and butter and focus has been on that middle market commercial scale solar.
That can take a number of different forms. There’s community solar, power-purchase agreements, and net metering. Our customers range from churches, universities, and hospitals to Fortune 500 companies. We work with so many different types of customers across our just-under 300 sites currently under management.
AFN: Why invest in agrovoltaics?
ZB: Multi-use project sites are advancing America’s energy dominance and economic growth.
Solar energy isn’t just about the megawatts produced, but the impact in the community. [Agrovoltaics] is a critical cross-industry collaboration between solar developers, farmers, and landowners that strengthens both agriculture and energy infrastructure.
Often our stakeholders, being landowners, want to ensure that their land is being taken care of in a certain way. We have also found that some of our investors are just increasingly interested in how [solar] sites can be made more sustainable—that is the likely the future of the solar industry as a whole.
Studies show that agrivoltaics can increase productivity by . This approach supports America’s energy dominance goals and local communities by optimizing land use and fostering partnerships to drive economic growth and energy security.
Opponents of solar would argue that solar takes away from productive land use. So agrovoltaics can be an answer to that.
There’s also just a growing demand for energy, with AI and the massive demand for data centers. And solar and battery storage are some of the quickest forms of our types of energy to stand up—much quicker than building a new gas plant, and quicker than wind.
So I think we are just a key ingredient to that overall meeting of the energy demand. And when we’re able to do it in a way that [convinces] people to allow solar on their land, it’s a win-win.
AFN: What forms can agrovoltaics take?
ZB: At a high level, it’s co-locating solar with usable agricultural land. Within that usable agricultural land piece, there are different breakdowns.
In its most basic form it is planting native pollinator species. Oftentimes with solar, you’re planting turf grass [around the solar installation] that’s typically not native [to the region]. It needs to be cut all the time, and it can actually cause the temperature to be quite warm underneath the solar panels. High heat on a [solar] module is actually .
Native pollinator species are obviously better for the local ecosystem and pollinator species, and actually can have a cooling effect underneath the panels.
One step up from there would be solar grazing, which CleanCapital does at a number of its sites. That’s bringing sheep onto the site that are managed by a shepherd, and the sheep actually help with the vegetation maintenance of the grasses onsite. That helps with costs, and it’s also just a more natural way to maintain the vegetation at some of our larger sites. (Having a mower come out multiple times per year is costly and polluting.)
We actually have a program with the University of Alaska at one of our sites in Alaska where they’re planting lower-growth, shady plants at a portion of our site there as a research project for some of their students.
There are also players in the space doing production of commodity crops like corn and soybean. There are some implications into how those sites [should be] designed to achieve that full agricultural, productive path in terms of the spacing of the [solar] modules, and being able to put a whole tractor safely through [an array].
Finally, we are piloting a beekeeping effort at one of our sites in Maryland, so that’s another effort supporting pollinators however we can. It will be interesting to see if we can replicate this model.
AFN: How many of your projects currently use agrovoltaics?
We currently have six using solar grazing, with shepherds coming to the site. They’re making income off of our lease payments to come. Then the local shepherds are being paid a fee to bring their herds on onto the site. It’s always in line, if not cheaper than, paying for mowing.
Another is using the beekeeping pilot program, and another is the one growing crops up in Alaska.
A high number of our sites are doing the native pollinator species, and that’s continuing to grow as we develop more of our sites.
We historically had bought already operating assets, trying to retrofit the land to be more pollinator friendly, and it never quite penciled. Now that we work at an earlier stage of leasing the land and doing the development [of the solar array] from soup to nuts, we have much more control.
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