Agrivoltaics: A Water Conservation Solution?

Kathryn Beroš:

Agri-voltaics has this tremendous potential to, rather than replace, give the farmers the option to continue farming their land, to continue contributing to this huge agricultural resource while also reducing their water demand.

Michael Torrance:

Welcome to Sustainability Leaders. I'm Michael Torrance, Chief Sustainability Officer at BMO. On this show, we will talk with leading sustainability practitioners from the corporate, investor, academic, and NGO communities to explore how this rapidly evolving field of sustainability is impacting global investment, business practices, and our world.

Disclosure:

The views expressed here are those of the participants and not those of Bank of Montreal, it's affiliates or subsidiaries.

Melissa Fifield:

Hi, I'm Melissa Fifield, Head of the BMO Climate Institute, and today I'm speaking with Kathryn Beroš, Founder and Managing Director of KAP Industry, a global agri-voltaics solution provider. Agri-voltaics pairs solar energy with farming to increase land use efficiency, produce income, and generate environmental and social value. Our guest on the show today will describe how agri-voltaics could also help address the challenge of water scarcity, particularly in the Western US.

Welcome to the show, Kathryn. For the benefit of our listeners, could you start us off explaining what is agri-voltaics? And what exactly is the main problem that it attempts to solve?

Kathryn Beroš:

Hi, Melissa. Thanks for having me. So agri-voltaics started as a land conflict solution, looking at how do you increase land productivity? How do you resolve this conflict of solar looking for flat land with higher radiance? Sounds like farmland, right?

So it started as land availability as a land solution, but what we're seeing is it's actually addressing many more problems. When you talk to farmers or when I talk to farmers, three challenges stand out. That's cost of labor, the cost of water, and then market variability in prices. Now, I should emphasize that these are California farmers. The problems are different across the United States, the problems are different globally. But ultimately, what that boils down to is operating costs and price variability.

What agri-voltaics does is it addresses both your operating costs by, well, we'll get into the benefits, but it also addresses the price variability by providing a predictable and steady stream of revenue. So a lot of farmers are carrying debt that they have to take out at the beginning of each growing season with the intention and the hope that they'll make it back after harvest. What agri-voltaics does is it puts cash in hand before harvest.

Melissa Fifield:

Can you give us a sense of the extent of the adoption of this type of technology in the ag industry? It sounds like it's got a lot of potential. I'm curious what the adoption has looked like.

Kathryn Beroš:

So this is growing in the United States, and both the AgriSolar Clearinghouse and the National Renewable Energy Lab have incredible maps that show where examples and sites are in the United States today. The primary adoption within the United States is going to be in that pollinator habitat, as well as solar grazing approach. Those are what we see most commonly adopted in the United States today.

What's growing and what I'm most excited about is the adoption of a crop pairing system. So it started in Colorado with Jack's Solar Garden and we're now seeing more and more sites pop up across the United States that pair crops with these solar systems.

Melissa Fifield:

So when we're talking about installation of these types of systems, what would the cost difference be to build and install an agri-voltaic system versus a traditional solar array that's placed over open land?

Kathryn Beroš:

So the cost differential is highly variable, and that's going to be based on what's going on in the world. There's so many drivers that change cost. So I highly encourage, do not anchor to any number that I say today because I guarantee you it's different tomorrow. But it's important to understand what's driving the cost so that you can understand in your context what the impact is going to be.

And the biggest difference that we see here, it's based on the steel. So for a lot of these systems, we're going to need a higher racking system to allow for operations to pass underneath, and that really comes down to an increase in steel. A very common saying is as high as you go above ground, you have to go just as deep below ground. So as these racking systems get higher, you have to equate that steel to as much as going below ground as well. So we've developed a financial feasibility tool to help farmers who are wondering if this is something worth pursuing, to quickly validate is this going to be financially feasible based on their context, based on their operations, based on the type of system that they would like to introduce to their operations.

Melissa Fifield:

Kathryn, you've had an opportunity to analyze the benefits and challenges of integrating agri-voltaics into farming practices in Kern County, which is the county surrounding Bakersfield here in California. What were some of the main takeaways from that analysis? And were you surprised by anything that you found?

Kathryn Beroš:

So I want to just start with some context of Bakersfield and Kern County. So Bakersfield is the county seat of Kern County. Bakersfield is the ninth-largest city in California. Kern County is the third-largest agriculture producing county within California. Last year, they produced just shy of $8 billion in annual economic value from agriculture. Kern County produces 80 different crops and has over 60,000 permanent and seasonal agriculture workers. This is a very agriculturally driven community. But on top of that, Kern County is the second-largest natural gas producer in California, as well as the highest renewable energy producer in California. So you've got both agriculture and energy as core economies for this community.

When we look at the crops in Kern County, some of the key crops are your tree nuts. So we're looking at walnuts, pistachios, almonds. There's a lot of citrus in the region. We're looking at the caracara oranges, clementines, grapefruits. And then we also see a lot of table grapes.

So what we looked at here was based on what's happening in California right now with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, what is going to be the impact to this community? And how can agri-voltaics play a role? When we look at the impacts of SGMA and this effort to reduce overdraft on groundwater resources in California, experts are predicting a 20% decrease in available and productive farmland in Kern County alone. That would lead to $580 million in economic losses.

So we worked with the City of Bakersfield and their Office of Community and Economic Development to understand can there be anything done to help mitigate these 580 million in losses and ensure that their community has protections and a future in these two core industries. Agri-voltaics, being that integration of both agriculture and energy, seems to be a very positive and full solution, but we were looking to validate that.

So we first started with understanding what system is going to be the easiest, the highest yielding, financially feasible system for this region? And based on current context in terms of interconnection availability, the current state of net metering, the cost based on the height, what we saw was an eight-foot elevated system that's behind the meter would be the easiest first step in terms of an agri-voltaics adoption in this region.

So then based on that system design, which crops would be best suited to pair? So we had to look at the operations of all of the crops in the region. We had to look at the impact of the shading on the crops. And what we saw was out of all of the crops in Kern County, table grapes stood out as having the highest potential as an early adopter.

Now, there's a lot of reasons why table grapes stand out as that high potential, one of them being table grapes are hand harvested, so rather than having extremely high equipment passing through the fields that you have to accommodate for, there are people out there in the fields. This is a very labor-intensive crop to harvest. And then in terms of the spraying during the growing process, the tractors are typically six to seven feet high, so we're able to accommodate the tractors underneath this eight foot system.

Melissa Fifield:

You mentioned SGMA earlier. Can you explain SGMA to our audience?

Kathryn Beroš:

So SGMA stands for the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, an act within California with the objective of mitigating groundwater overdraft. It's mainly focused on water banking and increasing water reservoir capacity. Agri-voltaics has this tremendous potential to, rather than replace, give the farmers the option to continue farming their land, to continue contributing to this huge agricultural resource while also reducing their water demand and contributing towards these SGMA goals.

Melissa Fifield:

So tell me a little bit about how that reduced direct sunlight affects the growth of the grapes in this case. I'm also curious about the impact on the people who are picking those grapes because it sounds like there's a pretty significant human health benefit also.

Kathryn Beroš:

Yeah, so starting with the human health benefit, farm workers face the highest rates of heat related deaths. Agri-voltaics and bringing in this shade reduces the surface temperature, reduces skin temperature. So what we see is this incredible potential to help protect farm workers and reduce the heat stress that they're experiencing.

This doesn't get talked about that often, but I really think it's the most important part and aspect of what agri-voltaics can offer. When we talk about places like the Central Valley and Kern County, they typically experience two extreme heat weeks. This is predicted to increase to four weeks. So while they're used to seeing two weeks at 115, 120 degrees, that's going to become four weeks. And the crops still have to be harvested, the business has to continue, and so people are having to be outside during these heats. I was just recently in 120 degrees and it changed me. Your brain does not function the same way when you're outside in 120 degrees with the sun just pounding on you. There's something really significant here about being able to introduce the shade and ensure that your farm workers are not having to be exposed to full sun when we're experiencing these high temperatures.

Then on the crop side, so if a person is benefiting from it, you can imagine your crops are also going to feel an impact from that. Now, everywhere is different, so it's really important to think about the impacts based on the context and the environment that this is happening in. Within California and the Mediterranean climate, you can anticipate mostly benefits. When you incorporate the shade, what you're seeing is a reduction in heat stress. So systems that are irrigated, there's a pretty good chance that that means that the crops are experiencing this thirstiness because of heat.

When you add in the shade, you reduce evapotranspiration, so you reduce the transpiring of the crops, which reduces its thirstiness to drink up all the water. So you no longer have to withdraw as much water to support the same production volume.

Now what's even more exciting is we've seen trials done where not only is there a reduction in water demand, but there's also an increase in crop yield. So you're now able to grow more food with less water.

What's even more exciting and why we thought and saw grapes as being the highest potential is table grapes, well, all grapes are vulnerable to rain. And that last month of the growing season is when California decides maybe we're going to rain. So a lot of operations then have to add plastic tarp over their grapes to protect them from the rain in that last month, if you bring in agri-voltaics, that's again an additional level of protection over your crops, so you don't have to worry about adding in that plastic during the last month.

Melissa Fifield:

So it sounds like there are a lot of unintended benefits from installing these systems that weren't necessarily part of the original design, but have turned out to have a lot of benefits, not just for human health, but consumer preferences and farming practices overall. You mentioned the impact on water and evaporation, the use of water, etc. But how scalable is agri-voltaics as a solution when it comes to addressing water scarcity issues in particular?

Kathryn Beroš:

So let's take Kern County as an example. There's 60,000 acres of grape farms that we saw that would be perfect candidates for an agri-voltaics application. If we were to apply agri-voltaics to all 60,000 of those acres, not only would that double the renewable energy generation in Kern County, it would also save enough water for 54,000 households.

Based on results in France, so we looked at a region with a very similar climate, we're seeing anywhere from 12 to 32% reduction in water demand when applied with grapes. So you can imagine if you apply that across 60,000 acres, that becomes very significant in terms of water savings.

Now, beyond water savings, I think when we talk about scaling agri-voltaics, it's not just getting to a point where we're seeing utility scale crop agri-voltaic pairings because that is possible. It's not talked about often, but oh my gosh, that's the dream. It's also about thinking about the breadth of dual applications that can exist. So increasing the research around aquavoltaics and understanding the interaction of floating solar on freshwater and marine life, so that we can see how that can play a role in reducing water evaporation, in playing a role in protecting our water systems.

Melissa Fifield:

That's incredible. I'm going to ask you if there's anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up.

Kathryn Beroš:

So I cannot talk about the Bakersfield work without thanking everyone involved in the Bakersfield work, so thank you all. And then just an open call. Look, if you have questions about agri-voltaics, if you think that this might be a solution for you, if you're looking at integrating agri-voltaics as an approach to your strategy, please reach out. You can find us at kapindustry.com, that's K-A-P industry.com.

Melissa Fifield:

Fantastic. Thanks so much for being our guest today, Kathryn, and for the incredible work that you're doing to look at how these technology solutions can help address the multitude of challenges and identify opportunities in agriculture as we move toward a net-zero future. Thanks for joining us today.

Kathryn Beroš:

Thanks for having me, and thank you to BMO for hosting this incredible conversation.

Michael Torrance:

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