As farmers, very like everybody else, wrestle with the price of dwelling, having farmland leased out by power firms can typically look like a very good choice.
On the one hand, whereas not essentially impacting precise meals manufacturing, the choice to lease land for photo voltaic panels is commonly tough for farmers. “Farmers have an emotional attachment to their land,” Lucy Bullock-Sieger, VP for technique at US renewables firm Lightstar Renewables, informed FoodNavigator.
Alternatively, the transactions typically present farmers with a dependable stream of revenue in a time when prices are excessive.
The fats of the land
Utilizing agricultural land for photo voltaic farms doesn’t essentially want to return on the expense of meals manufacturing. In some instances, it may well even enhance it.
Land can be utilized concurrently for photo voltaic panels and farmland, a mixture which is known as agrivoltaics. Whereas the method forces farmland and photo voltaic panels to share gentle, this doesn’t essentially hurt yields and might even, in keeping with a 2019 examine in Nature Sustainability, enhance them.
“Research within the US and Europe have proven that agrivoltaics tasks present crops below the array safety from early and late frosts, scale back the quantity of water required for irrigation, and enhance soil well being over time, leading to elevated meals yields,” Bullock-Sieger informed us.
Moreover, in keeping with Sarah Webb, Enterprise Improvement Director for UK-based renewable power firm Anesco, utilizing farmland for photo voltaic panels may enhance biodiversity. “We at all times attempt to reinforce the biodiversity of any land we develop,” she informed us. “For instance, we’ll create habitats for essentially the most at-risk wildlife and hen species. One website we just lately developed noticed a 100% enchancment.”
Nonetheless, whereas there are confirmed advantages to meals manufacturing and biodiversity, one of many key drivers for farmers to lease their land is monetary. In response to Webb, the cost-of-living disaster is a big issue within the uptick of leasing.
“Whereas each undertaking is totally different and the rationale behind leasing the land will differ for farmer to farmer, we’ve definitely seen a rise in enquiries from those that are eager to generate extra revenue because of monetary challenges,” Webb informed FoodNavigator.
“We’ve additionally labored with farmers who need to safe long-term assured revenue for future generations. Or they might be nearing retirement age and are taking a look at different alternatives for his or her land, with farming changing into bodily more difficult.”
“Photo voltaic electrical energy technology does certainly contribute in direction of conserving farming worthwhile by providing revenue diversification to farmers,” Peter Hess, Exterior Affairs Supervisor for EDF Renewables, the renewables arm of UK-based EDF Power, informed us. “That is definitely a serious profit to farmers who additionally are usually moderately keen about local weather change and its results on meals safety.”
Nonetheless, the power produced, at the least within the case of Anesco and EDF, doesn’t go on to the farmers. “The tasks that we design and construct at Anesco are giant scale photo voltaic farms and the power produced by them is fed into the nationwide grid,” Webb informed us.
“While the power produced doesn’t go on to a farmer’s buildings, it provides to the UK’s electrical energy community and importantly helps the nation’s transfer to inexperienced power and the goal of web zero carbon emissions.”
“The photo voltaic farms that we develop are of a dimension that they’re related on to the transmission community moderately than into the farm,” EDF’s Hess added. “As an increasing number of renewables are related, we have gotten much less reliant on fossil fuels and any power intensive processes are slowly being decarbonised consequently.”
The method of leasing
Farmland must be assessed by the power firm earlier than it may be leased for use by photo voltaic farms. First, at the least in keeping with the leasing course of undertaken by Anesco, the farmer should present a plan to point which land they’re contemplating. The power firm will do an in-house evaluation of the land, ascertaining whether or not it lies in an space of excessive flood threat or a conservation space.
“If the land is deemed appropriate,” Webb informed us, “we’ll set up the grid capability that’s probably obtainable throughout the space, to see if the scheme may very well be related and at a viable value. The timescale for getting a grid connection will even give a sign of the potential timeframe for the undertaking.”
At this level the settlement between the farmer and the power firm might be made, and after the photo voltaic panels are related into the grid, the farmer and power firm will enter into an ‘choice settlement,’ giving the power firm use of the land for an agreed period of time, which ‘usually tends to be a interval of 40 years’ in keeping with Webb.
