Byron continued fostering this idea and worked with local county officials to adjust existing zoning laws to develop Jack’s Solar Garden into a nationally leading agrivoltaic site. The site hosts a 1.2 MW community solar garden with the capacity to power over 300 homes, preserving the land underneath the panels for various nonprofit farmers, academic research plots, and livestock grazing. Looking to further their impact and increase adoption of these practices, Byron founded the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Center, the nonprofit education wing of Jack’s Solar Garden. The Center has provided educational tours and resources to countless schools, elected officials, and farmers since its inception. In a new venture this year, the Center recently produced the feature-length documentary Save the Farm, Save the Future, focusing on the harsh economic realities facing Colorado’s farmers and rural communities, and their real-life experiences with agrivoltaics. Through Byron’s work and the work of many others around the country, the concept of agrivoltaics, once relegated to academic circles and theoretical research, is finally gaining recognition in America as a viable solution to our mounting concurrent crises.
A rare bipartisan win
It is not a bold statement to say that the current federal administration is markedly anti-solar. Trump’s repeated attacks on clean energy are not only harming our quality of life, but restricting our ability to further agrivoltaic implementation. Despite current setbacks, evaluating the economics of agrivoltaics reveals that a bipartisan path to mutual success is possible. “Conservatives are most interested in keeping rural economies afloat and keeping land useful; liberals are more inclined toward green energy at any cost,” said Kominek. By integrating beneficial land use, green energy, and rural economic support, agrivoltaics offers a collaborative middle path to this division that requires shockingly little compromise. Byron sees hope in furthering the mission, saying, “It’s helpful when you have something that people like, and both sides of the aisle are passionate about. It’s a win-win all around.” This hope is bearing fruit in real time, as the work at Jack’s Solar Garden has helped inspire two pieces of bipartisan legislation passed by the Colorado legislature related to agrivoltaics in recent years: one in 2021 and one in 2023.
Moving Agrivoltaics forward
To ensure wider adoption of agrivoltaics, two things are needed: advocacy and financial will. “The easiest call to action for the general public is push your state-level and local-level politicians to adopt agrivoltaics into new and existing solar developments,” said Kominek. In the financial space, Byron’s request becomes more direct. “The tax equity investors are the people who have the most sway within the solar industry. These are the people who are going to figure out in the coming years how to utilize what used to be a 30% solar tax credit, moving down to 6%.” Banks also hold significant power in this space and could easily incorporate agrivoltaics into their underwriting practices. “For the most part, if it’s not in the contract, solar companies aren’t doing it of their own volition,” said Byron. “But banks could prioritize funding for projects that could target things like agrivoltaic grazing-centric projects. They could say that ‘those are the projects that are highest on our priority lists that will get funding first from us, and then we will go down the line after that’.”
When asked what his call to action for impact investors would be, Byron had no need to mince words.
“If you are truly an impact investor, and you have a chance to fund an agrivoltaic project that is going to do wonderful things for our environment and help people, and by doing so, you lose half a percent of your ROI, just do it. We need you to have a positive impact on the world, and if you’re losing sleep over 0.5% or 1%, and that you may only be barely beating the market or the index funds, you’re not an impact investor, you’re just an investor. Yes, payback is important, but we need to have a place for agriculture in the decision-making process; otherwise, we’ll have the same issues over and over.”
Providing hope
Seeing is believing, and with our communities so polarized right now, we need to see that disparate ideas can come together and create a world that starts to meet our full and diverse needs. Is agrivoltaics a panacea? No. Will it work for every farmer and every community? No, and that’s okay. Its beauty lies in the ability to show us that two truths can live at once. Through an agrivoltaic lens, we can see that over 10 million acres of land can be converted for solar development to meet 2050 climate goals, while still maintaining access to the land to support rural communities. We see that we can produce energy and economic vitality in an arid climate, while creating life-saving and water-protecting shade. Simply put, when we hold two things at once, we begin to see hope. “It warms my soul a little bit, seeing people get inspired almost immediately upon coming to the farm,” said Kominek. “I see hope in people’s eyes that says, it’s not just all doom and gloom, there is a possibility to do more, to do better. And that there are people out there trying to figure out how to do that. It’s such a good feeling.”
Article by Garrett Chappell, founder of Pasqueflower Consulting, LLC. Garrett is a consultant with experience in the credit union industry, sustainability project management, and nonprofit development.
Contact him at garrett@pasqueflowerconsulting.com