A bipartisan bill worthy of CCL's support?

Excerpt from Agrivoltaics Is Making Friends Across Partisan Lines (cleantechnica.com):

US farmers are warming up to agrivoltaics, a specialized field of renewable energy development that co-locates solar arrays with grazing fields, row crops, pollinator habitats, and other forms of agricultural activity. The rise of this dual-use movement comes at a fortunate time for solar advocates, as it can soften the opposition to rural solar with a bottom line case for farmers. After all, who doesn’t support farmers?

The latest demonstration of bipartisan support for agrivoltaics comes from the offices of US Senators Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Mike Braun of Indiana. They introduced the new Agrivoltaics Research and Demonstration Act of 2023 in the Senate on May 31.

Senator Heinrich is a Democrat, so his support for agrivoltaics is no surprise. The man-bites-dog story here is Senator Braun, who is a Republican. His home state of Indiana is among those in which Republican office holders are crusading against ESG (environment, social, governance) investing principles and something they call “woke capitalism.”

In fact, Braun himself has co-sponsored federal legislation aimed at stopping the Biden administration from “funding woke ESG projects with Americans’ retirements.”

Nevertheless, the Agrivoltaics Act is aimed at helping farmers turn a profit by co-locating solar panels on their farmland, so that’s different. In a press release announcing the new bill, Braun firmly asserted that solar power is good for business.

“When we can help farmers and producers get more income out of their croplands, it’s a win,” Braun stated.

“This bill will research agrivoltaics — solar panel systems that can be deployed over crops that can benefit from partial shading during the day — and how they can help farmers get more out of their fields,” he added.

Agrivoltaic researchers have been assembling evidence that the partial shade of solar panels can improve crop yields while conserving water and soil. The relationship is reciprocal, as the vegetation beneath the array creates a cooling microclimate that improves solar conversion efficiency (see more CleanTechnica coverage here).

The idea has already gained widespread acceptance, but the underlying research is still a work in progress. Heinrich and Braun aim to accelerate the learning curve through the new bill. It directs the US Department of Agriculture to conduct a soup to nuts state-of-the-science review. USDA is also tasked with defining agrivoltaic systems into existing federal programs.

In addition, the bill deploys the USDA’s existing Agricultural Research Service network to drill down into the bottom line cases for agrivoltaics, including general productivity and profitability as well as resilience, biodiversity, and community economic development.

“ARS will collaborate with USDA Climate Hubs and extension programs to translate research findings into educational and actionable technical assistance materials for farmers and ranchers,” the senators explain.

Funding for the new bill is a measly $15 million per year for the fiscal years 2024-2028, but a little can go a long way considering that USDA can leverage existing resources, including programs that are already under way.

On June 30, for example, USDA pointed out that its National Institute of Food and Agriculture division is supporting a multi-partner agrivoltaic project called SCAPES for “Sustainably Co-locating Agricultural and Photovoltaic Electricity Systems.”

The program is led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with assists from the University of Arizona, Colorado State University, Auburn University, the University of Illinois Chicago and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

As with the Agrivoltaics Act, SCAPES emphasizes bottom line benefits to farmers.

“Its goal is to maintain or increase crop yield; increase the combined (food and electricity) productivity of land; and diversify and increase farm profitability with diverse crops (row crops, forage and specialty crops) across three biophysically diverse regions in the U.S.: rainfed Illinois, dryland Colorado and irrigated Arizona,” USDA explains.

Another research project of note is a multistate Energy Department program on the benefits of solar panels with pollinator habitats, including Nebraska.