Justice-driven agrivoltaics: Facilitating agrivoltaics embedded in energy justice
Madeline Taylor, Joe Pettit, Takashi Sekiyama, Maciej M. Sokołowski
Abstract
Agrivoltaics comprises solar energy generation and agricultural activities co-located to create multi-purpose agricultural solar energy systems. In 2021, the global agrivoltaics sector was valued at USD $3.6 billion and is projected to grow to USD $9.3 billion by 2031. Agrivoltaics projects have successfully attracted increasing investment and research demonstrating the technical, economic, and scientific rationale to advance agrivoltaics as a crucial technology to achieve net zero emissions goals. The legal framework enabling agrivoltaics development is at varying stages of maturity across different jurisdictions. This study provides the first socio-legal study of agrivoltaics development applying an energy justice framework. It comparatively analyses the mature agrivoltaics sectors, laws, and policies in Massachusetts (United States of America) and Japan in a functional comparative analysis with New South Wales (Australia) applying the three principal pillars of energy justice; recognition, procedural, and distributive justice. This study demonstrates how energy justice can generate a framework for regulatory reform. Such reform can facilitate the expansion of agrivoltaics and unlock the full potential of co-locating of solar energy and agriculture.