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The demand for food and renewable energy is increasing significantly, whereas the availability of land for agricultural use is declining. Agrivoltaic systems (AVS), which combine agricultural production with solar energy generation on the same area, are a promising opportunity with the potential to satisfy this demand while avoiding land-use conflicts. In the current study, a Consequential Life-Cycle Assessment (CLCA) was conducted to holistically assess the environmental consequences arising from a shift from single-use agriculture to AVS in Germany. The results of the study show that the environmental consequences of the installation of overhead AVS on agricultural land are positive and reduce the impacts in 15 of the 16 analysed impact categories especially for climate change, eutrophication and fossil resource use, as well as in the single score assessment, mainly due to the substitution of the marginal energy mix. It was demonstrated that, under certain conditions, AVS can contribute to the extension of renewable energy production resources without reducing food production resources. These include maintaining the agricultural yields underneath the photovoltaic (PV) modules, seeking synergies between solar energy generation and crop production and minimising the loss of good agricultural land.

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In the ongoing energy transition in India, ground mounted photovoltaic (GM-PV) plays a crucial role which becomes evident when looking at both governmental PV targets and recent developments. Despite cost-effectiveness speaking in favor of GM-PV, generally, a major drawback of GM-PV is the high land usage. One possibility to overcome conflicting interests of land use is agrivoltaicsa combined land-use for food and electricity production. This paper summarizes the findings of a feasibility study on a 50 MWp agrivoltaic project in Maharashtra conducted by Fraunhofer ISE in 2018/2019 focusing on social impact and economic viability. The analyses indicate that an agrivoltaic system appears economically feasible with expected levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of INR 2.02 (EUR 0.0243) already including cost on water management, rainwater harvesting, water storage, and irrigation. Depending on the institutional arrangement between the farming community and the investor, the social impact is expected to vary from high benefits to risk of severe poverty among affected farmers.Further findings indicate that the use of bifacial glass-glass PV modules raises electrical yield by 6.4% compared to mono facial modules. Regarding land use, the study suggests that the analyzed agrivoltaic system is likely to almost double average land use efficiency measured by the combined output of electricity and agriculture per unit of land (+94%).

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