Why oil majors Shell and BP are combining solar energy and agricultural production

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1 year ago

November 14, 2023

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At Elm Branch Solar Farm, about an hour south of Dallas, Texas, a flock of sheep grazes among a vast field of solar panels. The flock’s shepherd, Amanda Stoffels, watches over it as the sheep munch on the grass and nap in the shade provided by the panels.

Stoffels owns this land, but leases it to Lightsource BP, a major solar energy developer that’s 50% owned by British oil major BP. She earns a steady monthly income from the lease payments as well as through her grazing contract with Lightsource, which pays her to graze her sheep around the panels, thereby keeping vegetation in check.

“It’s a new, modern approach to agriculture,” Stoffels says. Her contracts with Lightsource allowed her to quit her 9 to 5 job to become a full-time shepherd.

An emerging industry called agrivoltaics combines solar energy production with agricultural activities such as sheep grazing, beekeeping and crop growing. This land management strategy could help alleviate the tension between farmers and solar developers, groups that often have competing land-use interests.

“Even though the United States is a very large country with a lot of available land, every single square inch of land is either owned, protected or cherished by someone or many people. And many people do not want to see that land change or transform into something different from what it has been,” explained Jordan Macknick, the Lead Energy-Water-Land Analyst for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Agrivoltaic projects, Macknick says, could be a sort of compromise. “So agrivoltaics really offers us that opportunity to continue farming, continue doing these agricultural activities while also producing clean electricity.”

Amanda Stoffels feeds her flock of sheep at Elm Branch Solar Farm in Ellis County, Texas. Stoffels earns money by leasing her land to solar developer Lightsource BP and grazing her sheep around the panels.

Juhohn Lee

Crop growing on solar farms is still a nascent area of research and some farmers still have concerns.

“Solar takes some of the best land out of production because they want land that’s 1% to 4% slope,” explained Tom Koranek, a landowner and beekeeper who leases land to Lightsource and produces honey on the solar farm. That flat, treeless land is ideal for both solar panels and crop production, he says.

Still, agrivoltaic projects are as close to a win-win for farmers and solar developers as we currently have, and as the solar industry rapidly expands, experts say we can expect to see agrivoltaics expanding right alongside it.

Opening up new markets

The nation will need to build out a massive amount of utility-scale solar to meet its decarbonization goals. Given that agricultural land comprises 44% of the U.S.’ total land area, many solar developers are looking to cite new projects on farms.

“For solar developers, I think the attraction of agrivoltaics is largely that it helps with community acceptance and community excitement about solar projects” explains Becca Jones-Albertus, Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office. “Grazing land in this country is about a third of all of our land use. And if you’re able to make that a dual use with solar energy production, you have now opened up a huge potential market space that wasn’t open before.”

Today, the U.S. has about five gigawatts of agrivoltaic projects, encompassing more than 35,000 acres across over 30 different states. While this only represents about 3% of the country’s installed solar capacity, it’s a growing industry, and farmers are taking note.

“It’s a much better financial contribution than growing crops,” said Koranek about leasing his land to Lightsource. “Crops are very risky. So some years you may make a good return and other years you may not. And so this is a steady income year every year.”

Landowner and beekeeper Tom Koranek shows off the honey he produces at Briar Creek Solar Farm in Navarro County, Texas.

Katie Brigham

Lightsource operates a combined 615 megawatts of sheep grazing and solar power projects, around 12% of the nation’s entire agrivoltaic portfolio. The company plans to add an additional 1,058 megawatts worth of projects next year.

Shell is also involved in the space through its 44% stake in solar developer Silicon Ranch. The ranch operates 1,300 megawatts of agrivoltaic projects with an additional 900 megawatts planned over the next two years.

While most solar developers opt to lease land, Silicon Ranch buys it outright, often purchasing degraded farmland that’s no longer in production.

“We want to tell these communities that we are committed for the long haul, and we’re going to become members of these communities in meaningful ways,” said Silicon Ranch’s Co-Founder and CEO, Reagan Farr. “So our business model of owning real estate was a function of how we viewed this asset class.”

Like Lightsource, Silicon Ranch pays local ranchers to graze sheep on their solar farms. But Farr says the company has encountered a sheep shortage, leading Silicon Ranch to invest in its own flock, which it plans to grow to over 30,000 by 2030.

While there are other players in the domestic agrivoltaic market such as Enel Green Power and US Solar, Lightsource and Silicon Ranch remain the largest players in the space. American oil majors such as Chevron and Exxon haven’t invested in agrivoltaics.

Solar plus crop production

While it’s relatively well understood how to graze sheep and create pollinator habitats among solar panels, it’s a trickier prospect to grow crops below and between the panels.

Many crops such as tomatoes and broccoli can theoretically grow beneath solar panels, but the design of the solar array usually needs to be altered, often by elevating the panels so that crops can reach their full height. That gets costly, and while the economics can work for small-scale projects in markets with strong solar incentives, scaling up is a challenge.

“I would say given the existing cost of PV technology, given the existing energy markets that we have in the United States, it will be very challenging to see crop production agrivoltaics happen at a scale bigger than five megawatts at a time,” says Macknick.

But even if we won’t see utility-scale crop production and solar energy projects anytime soon, there’s still a lot of energy in this space. The Department of Energy is currently funding six agrivoltaic projects, with the goal of enabling the deployment of over 1 megawatt of projects focused on crop production, and over 10 megawatts of projects focused on grazing and pollinator habitats.

Lightsource BP says it’s interested in getting into crop production, hoping that one of its sites can serve as a test project next year. Farr says Silicon Ranch isn’t pursuing partnerships yet. But whatever route both companies, and their oil industry backers, take, community relationships and mutually beneficial land-use arrangements are going to be paramount.

“We need to bring value to the communities where we site these solar arrays, or we’re going to lose our social license to operate. And that’s going to hurt our ability to meet some of these very aggressive, renewable energy goals that we have as a country,” said Farr.

Watch the video to learn more about the emerging agrivoltaics industry and hear from the farmers involved.

Environment

Go West, young brand – GreenPower Motor Company sells 11 more BEAST buses

Published

7 hours ago

January 19, 2025

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GreenPower Announces Order of 11 BEAST All-Electric School Buses for Western U.S. Markets

GreenPower Motor Company says it’s received three orders for 11 of its BEAST electric Type D school buses for western state school districts in Arizona, California, and Oregon.

GreenPower hasn’t made the sort of headline-grabbing promises or big-money commitments that companies like Nikola and Lion Electric have, but while those companies are floundering GPM seems to be plugging away, taking orders where it can and actually delivering buses to schools. Late last year, the company scored 11 more orders for its flagship BEAST electric school bus.

As far as these latest orders go, the breakdown is:

seven to Los Banos Unified School District in Los Banos, California
two for the Hood River County School District in Hood River, Oregon
two for the Casa Grande Elementary School District in Casa Grande, Arizona

Those two BEAST electric school buses for Arizona will join another 90-passenger BEAST that was delivered to Phoenix Elementary School District #1, which operates 15 schools in the center of Phoenix, late last year.

“As school districts continue to make the change from NOx emitting diesel school buses to a cleaner, healthier means of transporting students, school district transportation departments are pursuing the gold standard of the industry – the GreenPower all-electric, purpose-built (BEAST) school buses,” said Paul Start, GreenPower’s Vice President of Sales, School Bus Group. “(The) GreenPower school bus order pipeline and production schedule are both at record levels with sales projections for (2025) set to eclipse the 2024 calendar year.”

GreenPower moved into an 80,000-square-foot production facility in South Charleston, West Virigina in August 2022, and delivered its first buses to that state the following year.

Electrek’s Take

GreenPower electric school buses — BEAST and NanoBEAST; via GreenPower Motor Company.

Since the first horseless carriage companies started operating 100 years ago (give or take), at least 1,900 different companies have been formed in the US, producing over 3,000 brands of American automobiles. By the mid 1980s, that had distilled down to “the big 3.”

All of which is to say: don’t let the recent round of bankruptcies fool you – startups in the car and truck industry is business as usual, but some of these companies will stick around. If you’re wondering which ones, look to the ones that are making units, not promises.

SOURCE | IMAGES: GreenPower Motors.

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Harbinger electric truck brand gets real with $100M Series B funding raise

Published

8 hours ago

January 19, 2025

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Medium-duty EV maker Harbinger raises $100 million in Series B funding

While some recent high-profile bankruptcies have cast doubt on the EV startup space recently, medium-duty electric truck maker Harbinger got a shot of credibility this week with a massive $100 million Series B funding round co-led by Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund.

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for fledgling EV brands like Lion Electric and Canoo, but box van builder Harbinger is bucking the trend, fueling its latest funding round with an order book of 4,690 vehicles that’s valued at nearly $500 million. Some of the company’s more notable customers including Bimbo Bakeries (which owns brands like Sara Lee, Thomas’, and Entenmann’s) and THOR Industries (Airstream, Jayco, Thor), which is also one of the investors in the Series B.

Other prominent investors include Tiger Global, the Coca-Cola System Sustainability Fund, and ArcTern Ventures.

As for what makes Harbinger such an attractive investment prospect, Dipender Saluja, Managing Partner of Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund explains that, “Harbinger has demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach significant milestones far quicker than other EV companies … the market has been impressed by their ability to develop large portions of the vehicle in-house to drive down unit costs, while remaining capital efficient.”

The company plans to use the funds to ramp up to higher-volume production capacity and deliver on existing orders, as well as build-out of the company’s sales, customer support, and service operations.

“Harbinger is entering a rapid growth phase where we are focused on scaling production of our customer-ready platform,” said John Harris, co-founder and CEO. “These funds catalyze significant revenue generation. We’ve developed a vehicle for a segment that is ripe for electrification, and there is a strong product/market fit that will help fuel our upward trajectory through 2025 and beyond.”

The company has raised $200 million since its inception in 2021.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.

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Environment

Michigan State Police deploy their first electric patrol vehicle

Published

10 hours ago

January 19, 2025

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Michigan State Police deploy their first electric patrol vehicle

State Police Pilots First Battery Electric Vehicle in Patrol Fleet

There is no state more associated with cars and car culture than Michigan – and the state that’s home to the Motor City has just taken a huge step into the future with the deployment of its first-ever all electric police vehicle.

The 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E patrol vehicle is assigned to the Michigan State Police State Security Operations Section, and will be to be used by armed, uniformed members of the MSP specializing in general law enforcement and security services at state-owned facilities in the Lansing, MI area.

“This is an exciting opportunity for us to research, in real time, how a battery electric vehicle performs on patrol,” says Col. James F. Grady II, director of the MSP. “Our state properties security officers patrol a substantially smaller number of miles per day than our troopers and motor carrier officers, within city limits and at lower speeds, coupled with the availability of charging infrastructure in downtown Lansing, making this the ideal environment to test the capabilities of a police-package battery electric vehicle.”

The MSP’s Precision Driving Unit is nationally renowned for its annual Police Vehicle Evaluation, which our own Scooter Doll participated in last year, driving the then-new Chevy Blazer EV Police Pursuit Vehicles in a game of “cops and robbers.”

In those tests, the EVs have impressed – but the MSP has been hesitant to commit to a BEV until now. “We began testing battery electric vehicles in 2022, but up until now hybrids were the only alternative fuel vehicle in our fleet,” said Lt. Nicholas Darlington, commander of the Precision Driving Unit. “Adding this battery electric vehicle to our patrol fleet will allow us to study the vehicle’s performance long-term to determine if there is a potential for cost savings and broader applicability within our fleet.”

Michigan joins other states like Wisconsin and California in deploying electric patrol cars and saving big money on fuel and maintenance, with many more out there and many more to come.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Michigan State Police.

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