TAKEAWAY
Managing the political hot potato of expanding solar PV projects on Utah farms can be improved by understanding growers’ opinions, particularly related to fair water policy.
One way of scaling up the use of solar photovoltaics is to build solar farms on agricultural land. Inevitably, it involves trade-offs.
Transitioning to clean energy could help to improve Utah’s air quality, but the transition depends on the extent to which individuals and communities accommodate clean energy technologies like solar photovoltaics. An efficient way of scaling up the use of solar energy is to build solar farms on agricultural land. In addition to clean energy, this could offer other benefits to Utah’s people and environment—converting water intensive cropland to solar panels could reduce water consumption while generating steady lease income to landowners.
Inevitably, reducing agricultural water use involves trade-offs. New research is investigating conditions that may support or inhibit farmers from converting traditional farmland to solar farms, including concerns about losing future water rights. Interviews and surveys of growers will be able to identify other economic, environmental, cultural heritage and aesthetic considerations at play.
For example, is partial conversion of agricultural fields to solar panel fields more appealing to farmers than other methods of reducing water use? More broadly, this research identifies roles that growers see for themselves in processes for co-developing water conservation policies and managing solar energy development.
