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New Energy World
New Energy World embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low carbon technologies.
Harvesting among solar panels: can agrivoltaics help Europe meet green targets?
31/1/2024
8 min read
In the conflict between land use for food production versus green energy generation, new technology promises to eradicate the either-or-question: agrivoltaics. The European Union (EU) is keen to support the integration of solar panels into farming as a way to meet its renewable energy targets, but energy journalist Karolin Schaps finds hurdles remain along the way.
On the back of the wish to wean itself off Russian energy imports, the EU in 2022 sharpened its solar power capacity goal, wanting to install 720 GW by 2030. This threefold increase from installed capacity in 2022 presents a huge challenge to the European energy sector as developers struggle to gain access to land, project permitting is slow and local opposition to large ground-mounted solar farms is on the rise.
Fresh hopes for meeting the EU’s solar targets now rest on the shoulders of Europe’s farmers as the potential for combining solar farm development with agricultural activity is proving enormous. Using only 1% of the EU’s utilised agricultural area for so-called agrivoltaic projects could result in as much as 944 GW of installed solar capacity, according to the EU’s Joint Research Centre. This would firmly beat the bloc’s 2030 target and deliver renewable energy capacity without eating up valuable fertile land.
‘The industry is ready to take off. We have everything we need: the research, the results, the technology. It comes down to a lot of political will and interest in scaling up renewable energy,’ says Lina Dubina, Policy Adviser for Sustainability at Brussels-based trade association SolarPower Europe.