Climate opportunities: Agrivoltaics

Advancing solar energy and agriculture

India has made huge strides towards meeting its ambitious international climate goals. Today, renewable energy constitutes about 47% of India’s total installed capacity, with a growing dependence on non-fossil fuel-based energy sources, like solar, wind, and hydro. In 2024, India saw a twofold increase in solar installations compared to 2023, driven by government incentives, policy reforms, and increased investments in domestic manufacturing.  

Renewable energy advances are key to India’s climate goals and can enable India to become energy secure, self-reliant, and a clean energy superpower. This can simultaneously improve livelihoods, access to education and health, and living standards. 

However, a significant challenge as an emerging economy is that we must meet multiple development needs with limited resources. 

For example, over 74% of solar development in India has been built on land that has high agricultural or ecological value. As solar power accelerates, it creates competition for land in a country where 60% of the land area is already farmed. How do we strike a balance between solar energy and agriculture? How do we facilitate energy access and boost food security at the same time?

Agrivoltaics: A promising dual use solution

Agrivoltaics offers an opportunity to resolve this tension: a dual use solution that integrates solar panels on agricultural land, and optimises land utilisation in both the agriculture and renewable energy sectors. The approach prioritises agriculture, with an aim to ensure that crop yields and agri-pastoral activities are maintained.

Agrivoltaics offers twin benefits for nature and people in India: 

• It reduces pressures on land and water, by reducing competition for land, increasing water retention of soil by providing shade, and reducing irrigation requirements.
• It stimulates the development of rural economies with socio-economic benefits for communities by ensuring renewable energy access and creating opportunities for income generation.

Source: Diego Vivanco, Pexels.

Agrivoltaics is expected to play a significant role in meeting India’s 2070 net-zero goals, and can be used to address mitigation and adaptation priorities at the intersection of land, water, energy, and food. It impacts multiple SDGs and can diversify farmer incomes, build climate resilience, and accelerate renewable energy generation towards India’s climate targets.  

There is emerging policy potential in India around solarisation of agriculture, such as under PM Kusum 2.0, but this sector still faces challenges. For example, around 20-25 existing pilots mainly focus on research and innovation, but with rising interest from FPOs and farmers, more viable business models can be tested. In the short term, there is also a need to clearly define agrivoltaics installations for India, integrate incentives within other schemes to promote the use of agrivoltaics, promote innovation through R&D grants, and increase education and training for farmers. Furthermore, the costs of agrivoltaics are higher than grid-scale renewable energy.

What can philanthropists do to support India’s climate goals? 

Scaling agrivoltaics in India will require all forms of finance. Philanthropic capital will be specifically required to ensure project communities are sufficiently included and capacitated, R&D is scaled, and solutions are context-specific and data-informed. This will ensure both safeguards and a multiplier effect on public and private capital flow into this space.

– Shweta Srinivasan, Senior Specialist – Energy Transitions, India Climate Collaborative

Philanthropy can help signal and cement agrivoltaics as a promising and necessary climate solution for India. Funders can surface innovative farmer-centric models, build evidence by supporting research and pilots, fund critical R&D, build awareness about agrivoltaics among farmers and FPOs, and facilitate knowledge sharing in the ecosystem. 

To align government and philanthropic ambition around agrivoltaics, the India Climate Collaborative has supported the creation of a collaborative platform, the India Agrivoltaics Alliance. This Alliance currently comprises 46 organisations (34 in the network and 12 in the principal action committee), and is anchored by the National Solar Energy Federation of India. It aims to build partnerships and platform voices from the agriculture and solar sectors to address issues at the nexus of food-energy-water, including carbon emissions, rising food insecurity, and a need to enhance agrarian livelihoods and land productivity.

Write to solutions@indiaclimatecollaborative.org to learn more about funding opportunities for agrivoltaics and/or to partner with us.