Land Use & Solar Development -
As solar projects expand nationwide, engaging farmers, ranchers, and rural communities is crucial. SEIA’s AgriSolar Alliance helps project developers build relationships, advocate for agrivoltaic policies, and create resources and standards to support responsible solar growth.
Expanding Solar in Agriculture
Building Connections
The AgriSolar Alliance is enhancing the solar industry’s presence and visibility at conferences, conventions, and events within the agricultural sector. Partnering with SEIA member developer companies, the Alliance engages at these agricultural conventions to have an organized presence, ranging from ads in printed programs to speaking engagements, in addition to general convention attendance.
Solar and Agriculture: Growing Together
At the federal level, SEIA advocates for legislative policies through the annual federal appropriations process, the Farm Bill, and other legislative processes, for funding to support research and development of agrivoltaics practices, building new energy infrastructure for rural communities, and more.
SEIA also works with federal agencies on regulatory issues related to utility-scale development on agricultural lands. This includes education and advocacy with USDA to ensure that utility-scale solar development is defined correctly in Farm Service Manuals to ensure that farmland used for solar development can return to an “agricultural use” classification after the life of the project.
Alongside partners like American Farmland Trust, SEIA analyzes regulatory barriers to developing on brownfields and previously degraded agricultural lands and provide recommendations that would better incentivize development outside of working agricultural lands. SEIA’s Ecosystems Services Working Group is engaged in ways to better quantify the environmental and natural benefits of utility-scale solar on ag and farmland through more advanced research and education.
SEIA’s Community Engagement Working Group was established in 2024 to provide a forum for SEIA members to coordinate and collaborate on campaigns and tactics to build local community support for project development, and counteract misinformation and false narratives about the industry. The Community Clean Energy Coalition, an affiliated 501c4 campaign, also supports community engagement efforts through campaign trainings and resources for developers.
SEIA is partnering with the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) on a series of industry standards for agrivoltaics applications. These standards would provide clarity and consistency to agricultural applications for solar and storage projects, and provide increased confidence for landowners and jurisdictions regarding new development
Through our ANSI-certified standards development process, individual Standards Technical Committees, managed either by ASABE or SEIA, will be established for each individual standard that the standards bodies pursue. These committees will be open for application to industry to inform the standard design.
Links & Featured Resources
Additional Resources
Factsheets
