Land use issues surrounding solar energy and agriculture have the potential to create conflict and slow permitting processes—or they can be an opportunity for designing projects to deliver broad benefits for communities and achieve energy and climate goals. A number of states are adopting or considering policy initiatives to address perceived solar and agriculture conflicts, from statewide bans on using prime farmland for solar development to restrictions on local government regulation that prioritizes or protects local agriculture. New analysis by GPI shows the importance of understanding the local context for land use impacts of solar development.

By looking at the local context, we can identify places that could benefit most from decision-making tools and policy support to address local concerns and impacts while also enabling the development of a new clean energy system.

As demand for solar energy production continues to grow rapidly, local land use impacts become even more important to address. Solar can be co-located with other uses (referred to as agrivoltaics or ecovoltaics) to mitigate land use impacts, but the potential scale of development is still significant.

This post looks at our case study of Illinois to illustrate the importance of examining and addressing the local impacts of solar energy (and other land uses) on agriculture and builds on our previous analysis of the potential footprint of solar across the US.

Evaluating the potential economic impact of solar on the agricultural economy of communities

The potential conversion of agricultural lands to solar production is an area of growing concern for agricultural communities and state and national agricultural advocates. Much of the concern focuses on the economic impacts of lost agricultural production. Communities also express concerns about the inefficient use of prime soils uniquely suited to agriculture and impacts on the community character.

In a previous blog post on the land footprint of solar energy, GPI analyzed how solar development could impact agriculture on a county scale. We compared land in cultivation at the county level with an estimate of land required for existing and proposed solar development to assess the potential impact on agricultural economies. Our analysis showed that overall, the impact on the economic viability of agriculture was minimal at a county scale.

As described by Jessie Eidbo and Maggie Kristian in the original post, “in cases of agricultural land conversion, the economic risks of conversion are closely associated with the amount of land being converted [within a county or community].” The total solar land use (existing and proposed) is rarely greater than 1 percent of the agricultural lands “in any given county, posing a low development risk to local productive agricultural capacity.”

Yet we also found that the project site and local context matter—and that, in some cases, solar projects could significantly impact the agricultural economy.

Our more recent analysis, building off that original work, demonstrates the breadth of impact that decision makers need to consider in improving permitting and planning processes.

In our previous analysis, GPI compared land in cultivation at the county level with an estimate of land required for existing and proposed solar development to assess the potential impact on agricultural economies.

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