What barriers and opportunities exist around agrivoltaics? What are knowledge gaps in California? On February 27th, the Berkeley Equitable Agrivoltaics team convened a workshop with participants from around the state to gather input on these questions and generate a collaborative research agenda. The team’s work aims to advance an equitable roll-out of agrivoltaics, or the co-location of solar arrays and agriculture, in the state.  

Members of the research team, along with other UC partners, facilitated interactive sessions throughout the day, which focused on the following topic areas: agriculture and the environment, community engagement and policy, and energy and grid.

In the morning, Charlene Kaloki, Community Programs Manager at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design and Hossein Ayazi, Senior Policy Analyst at the Othering and Belonging Institute, led a workshop that previewed guiding principles and goals for the workshop and solicited feedback from participants. Guiding principles for the project highlighted the importance of facilitating cross-sector dialogue to envision and build an equitable future. Workshop goals included building community around agrivoltaics in California and shaping ‘future community-informed, and actionable research. 

Participants, including staff from local unions, rural advocacy groups and state government, worked together throughout the day to brainstorm pressing questions about agrivoltaics that were relevant to their constituencies. 

During the afternoon session on community engagement and policy, Marc Weiss, Visiting Professor in Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design, offered a specific framework to consider while brainstorming questions. He posited that questions can be categorized under gateways, values-aligned, and timely. Gateways would be questions that are necessary to answer early-on to lead to other questions and information down the line. Values-aligned are questions that center equity and community perspectives, which is a central pillar of this project. Lastly, timely questions would be ones that researchers have the resources to explore right away. Some of the questions that emerged were: 

• What are the needs CA communities have for resilience up and down the state (including energy reliability) and what role(s) can agrivoltaics play to meet those needs?
• How does agrivoltaics work for farmers without secure land tenure? 
• How do these projects impact water use efficiency?
•  Is it always most profitable to connect to the grid or are there scenarios where the energy should stay on-farm?

Community engaged research is a foundational goal of the Berkeley Equitable Agrivoltaics team. The workshop aimed to build relationships among all participants. Many folks in the room recognized that partnerships will be necessary to tackle the large questions emerging around agrivoltaics in the state. 

UC Berkeley Professor of Agroecology, Tim Bowles gave concluding remarks at the workshop, sharing that the community of practice that attended the workshop will have the opportunity to stay in touch via an online group. This will be a forum to share updates regarding research, share relevant resources and ask questions of colleagues. The Berkeley team is working with partners from UC Davis, UC Merced and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in hopes of pursuing a collaborative research opportunity in the coming year.