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Lower costs and government incentives make harvesting solar energy cheaper than growing crops in some places, but there is a worry that a solar boom would further destabilize the American food system.
Researchers behind a $10 million project led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign say combining crops and solar power will increase the productivity of both.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, university researchers, biologists and mechanical engineers have joined together in Illinois, Arizona and Colorado to show that “agrivoltaics” — growing crops under solar panels — can give farmers the best of both worlds.
NewsNation talked with Nenad Miljkovic, who leads the engineering team for the SCAPES Agrivoltaics Project, about what that could look like. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
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