Uncovering attitudes towards agrivoltaics via community engagement

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">An American research group has conducted a pilot workshop for agrivoltaics stakeholders in Arizona, including farmers, developers, government officials and indigenous leaders. A reflection paper offers some key takeaways for future public participation.</span></p><p>The semi-arid lab for scalable agrivoltaics (SALSA) research team of the University of Arizona has conducted a pilot workshop on community engagement in agrivoltaics. Writing a perspective paper on the Arizona-specific workshop, the team has described its organizational structure, shared some insights, and listed key takeaways.</p>
<p>“Due to the wide range of project scales, ownership structures, production outputs, and benefit distributions that agrivoltaic projects may include, discerning between aspects that contribute to local support and opposition is difficult,” the group explained.</p>
<p>“To that end, this Perspective presents a pilot workshop on community engagement in agrivoltaics organized by the authors as an avenue for improving awareness and understanding local expectations of agrivoltaic systems.”</p>
<p>Invitees were targeted online, capping participation at 55. Fourteen local farmers have attended, along with fourteen local food advocates, twelve leaders from indigenous Tribal communities, six researchers studying agriculture and energy topics, five regional and state government officials, and four solar developers operating in Arizona. The workshop consisted of several components: a pre-survey, an educational component, group work, a tour of an experimental agrivoltaics array, and a farm-to-table dinner.</p>
<p><strong>The workshop</strong></p>
<p>The survey included 21 agree-disagree statements, with a five-point scale, relating to agriculture, solar energy, and agrivoltaics. The educational component included a presentation focused on technical and agronomic aspects of agrivoltaics. Later, participants were sorted into groups of 7–8 participants, with representation across different stakeholder groups. They were asked to discuss ownership and benefit structure, technical design, project scale/size, and agricultural products. Finally, the tour and dinner took place, and researchers were available to answer questions.</p>
<p>According to survey results, 74% of participants agreed that large-scale solar development is essential to addressing climate change, although only 33% strongly agreed. Only 54% of the participants agreed that they would be willing to live near a solar array, and 87% agreed that crops, pollinator plantings, and livestock grazing improved the aesthetics of a solar array. While four of the eight groups stated a desire for agrivoltaics to be “small,” the survey and group work found a disagreement regarding what constitutes that. For example, one group stated two to five acres as small, while another classified anything less than 150 acres as small.</p>
<p>Questions of agrivoltaic ownership generated mixed results, both in the survey and in the group work. “Four of the eight groups described an ‘optimal’ agrivoltaics project as one with ownership shared among a combination of the farmer, energy company, and community,” the academics said. &#8220;Three groups described projects solely owned by the farmer. Notably, one group comprised primarily of members of Tribal communities presented an alternative structure: ‘Stewardship, not ownership. Use a cooperative model initiated by the community.’”</p>
<p><strong>Insights</strong></p>
<p>The team found that 76% of participants agreed with the statement “Agrivoltaic systems are beneficial to local communities,” while six groups expressly stated that an optimal agrivoltaic system would produce food crops. Three groups also mentioned water savings as an expected benefit of agrivoltaic systems, while two groups mentioned education as a benefit of such systems.</p>
<p>“Community engagement workshops such as this can help clarify public expectations around the size, ownership, and benefit distribution of agrivoltaic systems,” the SALSA team said. “As the adoption of agrivoltaics continues across the world, community engagement will play an integral role in ensuring adoption occurs in a socially sustainable manner.”</p>
<p>The study appears in “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629625003548" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Cultivating engagement: Public participation in agrivoltaics planning and design</a>,” published in <em>Energy Research & Social Science. </em>Researchers from the <a href="https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/04/11/carbon-battery-startup-aims-to-make-energy-storage-circular/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">University of Arizona</a>, the <a href="https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/07/05/new-study-finds-growing-inequality-in-metal-footprints-of-renewable-power-value-chains/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">University of Maryland</a>, <a href="https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/08/21/researchers-use-solar-to-turn-human-waste-into-fertilizer/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Stanford University</a>, and the <a href="https://pv-magazine-usa.com/press-releases/minn-nature-center-installs-sunverge-system-to-deliver-reliable-renewable-power-for-community-emergency-center-in-duluth/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">University of Minnesota Duluth</a> contributed to the paper.</p>