All Solar, No Farming: The Myth and Reality of Agrivoltaics

Power generation above the panels, crop cultivation below: a single plot of land yields two streams of income. “Agrivoltaics” claims to deliver multiple benefits—including clean electricity, efficient land use, agricultural modernisation, and rural development—and is frequently hailed as a win-win technological innovation that simultaneously addresses food, energy, and climate challenges.

According to researchers, agrivoltaics has experienced exponential growth in China over the past decade: from just two grid-connected projects in 2011 to more than 400 proposed or operational sites spread across the country by 2021, with a total installed capacity exceeding 40GW.

● Orchard and arable land in a county in central Shandong were requisitioned for agrivoltaics development. Following the takeover, portions of the land have been left fallow and are now choked with weeds. Photo: Foodthink reader

Yet when you zoom in on the ground, the reality becomes starkly apparent: the vast majority of these projects feature solar panels but little to no agriculture. The plots of land cast in shadow by the panels are frequently left fallow or left to yield barely anything.

Take an agrivoltaics project in a county in western Shandong Province as an example. A company constructed 460 solar greenhouses across more than 1,000 mu of arable land, reliably feeding 60 million kilowatt-hours of electricity into the grid every year. Yet only a handful of these structures have been rented out to local villagers for poultry farming or storage; the remainder sit completely unused.

Agrivoltaics initiatives branded as “green development” but functioning in practice as land grabs are far from isolated incidents across the country. So why have these projects failed to deliver on their originally promised multiple benefits? Are agrivoltaics schemes, operating under the banner of green development, actually helping farmers—or standing in their way?

I. Agrivoltaics: When Overcapacity Meets the Green Transition

After 2013, solar-agriculture began to expand rapidly across China’s central and eastern regions. The driving force was not demand from rural communities or the agricultural sector for renewable energy, but rather the need to absorb domestic overcapacity in photovoltaic manufacturing.

From the early 2000s, policy support and subsidies for clean energy in Europe and the US spurred a boom in China’s PV manufacturing industry. Before 2011, 95 per cent of all PV modules produced were exported overseas. By 2011, China accounted for nearly 80 per cent of global PV module production, securing its undisputed position as the world’s number one manufacturer.

Soon after, the US and Europe launched anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations into Chinese solar products, imposing steep tariffs. To find new outlets for domestic PV capacity, the Chinese government introduced a series of measures—including tax reductions, streamlined project approvals, and investment subsidies—to encourage the construction of solar power stations at home. Seizing the opportunity, PV companies embarked on a new scramble to secure land and projects across the country.

● The haze blanketing the North China Plain set the political tone for China’s green energy transition, and the local governments’ drive for industrial upgrading aligned seamlessly with the relocation of solar capacity. Pictured: the haze over Chaoyang District, Beijing, in December 2011. Image © Greenpeace/Wang Yi Kun

Solar power generation demands abundant sunlight and extensive flat land. In theory, the western regions—with their sparse populations, vast territories, and plentiful sunshine—appeared to be the ideal setting for solar farms. Yet, hampered by grid absorption limits and transmission bottlenecks, early solar development in the west met with little success. A Greenpeace report noted that during the first half of 2016, solar curtailment in China was largely concentrated across the five northwestern provinces, with curtailment rates climbing to 33% in Xinjiang and 32% in Gansu.

Policy incentives subsequently turned towards distributed solar projects in the land-constrained central and eastern provinces. To make this work, companies needed to integrate solar installations with established industries, extracting multiple yields from scarce land. In response, the “Solar+” model emerged.

● Solar arrays can be installed on rooftops and even span sewage treatment ponds; the “Solar+” concept can also be combined with aquaculture, desertification control, and livestock farming. Over the past ten years, the variants that have truly gained widespread adoption are Solar+ agriculture, aquaculture, and forestry. Left image: hakunamatata. Right image: Foodthink

Hu Zhanping, associate professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, North China Electric Power University, told Foodthink: “Over the past few years, governments at all levels have provided strong backing for distributed solar power generation. Subsidies of around ¥0.50 per kilowatt-hour were commonplace, and in some regions, combined incentives even reached ¥1.00 per kilowatt-hour.”

Research shows that a 20MW solar-agriculture project run by a wholly-owned subsidiary of CECEP in Weinan City, Shaanxi, benefited extensively from preferential policies. As the first central state-owned enterprise attracted for investment by the county government, the project’s land transfer fees for over 1,000 mu were fully subsidised by the government at more than ¥2.8 million for the first three years, alongside a tax relief package of “three years exempt, three years at half rate”. The benchmark feed-in tariff was set at ¥1.00 per kilowatt-hour, with the National Energy Administration offering a per-kWh subsidy of ¥0.6654 across the full project lifecycle and all generated electricity, valid for 25 years. This translated to annual revenue from electricity sales and subsidies nearing ¥47 million.

“As a result, even when confronted with substantial resistance to land transfer, solar enterprises retain a powerful incentive to move forward. To a considerable degree, this has been a key catalyst for the solar-agriculture boom in China since 2013,” Hu added.

II. Solar Power + Greenhouses: The Challenge of Complementary Agriculture and Solar Generation

In the heyday of solar-agriculture projects, when they were fast-tracked and expanded rapidly across the country, their business model was packaged as an enticing prospect: farmers would transfer their land use rights to solar-agriculture parks, securing rental income, while also taking up jobs within the parks to enjoy a dual income.

After mastering the day-to-day running of the greenhouses, farmers could rent plots themselves and upgrade their status to ‘agricultural entrepreneurs’. Solar panels on the roofs would supply free electricity to the greenhouse, with any surplus sold to the State Grid. Following the company’s technical guidance and order specifications, these contractors would cultivate organic vegetables and sell them back to the company at a premium over market rates. The economic return was said to be several times higher than that of conventional greenhouses of the same size.

In reality, however, this scenario is rarely seen.

First and foremost, all crops depend on sunlight; photovoltaic panels compete with agriculture not just for land, but for light itself.

Hu Zhanping discovered in Shouguang, Shandong, that smallholder farmers were reluctant to install solar panels on their own greenhouse roofs. The panels severely stunted the growth of crops such as tomatoes and cucumbers, and the high costs of installation and maintenance were beyond both their willingness and financial capacity to bear.

Consequently, solar energy companies often opt to build greenhouses specifically designed for solar installations, restricting suitable crops to shade-tolerant varieties such as leafy greens and mushrooms. Yet, as Hu Zhanping notes, ‘It is very difficult to achieve viable agricultural yields in solar greenhouses. I have yet to encounter a successful case in the field.’

Over the past two years, Chen Jing, a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Centre for Energy Transition and Social Development at Tsinghua University’s School of Social Sciences, surveyed solar greenhouses in Beijing, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Guangdong, finding that many lay fallow inside.

‘A few years ago, the solar-plus-greenhouse concept was heavily hyped. Many places built them, clustering to cultivate cash crops like mushrooms,’ she explains. ‘Mushroom yields did increase, but prices dropped. With low returns or even losses, many farmers simply stopped growing them.’

● Xinhua News Agency reported on a ‘mushroom-solar complementary’ agricultural project in Zhejiang. The image shows a grower inspecting the ventilation holes on mushroom logs. Image source: Web screenshot.

In her view, the issue is that photovoltaic companies typically lack agricultural expertise. They tack on an agricultural component simply to secure project quotas, only to realise they cannot generate sustainable returns. With the land’s agricultural zoning restricting alternative uses, they ultimately leave it entirely fallow.

The agri-PV project in Shandong Province, referenced at the start of the article, serves as a prime example. Initially, the project claimed an annual planned output of over 100 million kWh, alongside plans to cultivate 70,000 tonnes of mushrooms in greenhouses, rear 150,000 geese, and create more than 500 stable local jobs. However, due to design flaws, winter temperatures inside the greenhouses proved too low for either mushroom cultivation or goose rearing, leaving the vast majority of the structures empty.

● Numerous agri-PV projects are similarly venturing into agritourism. In 2017, the Weinan project referenced above generated monthly revenue of over 15,000 yuan for the company through spring and summer picking activities. Yet, compared to earnings from electricity sales and policy incentives, this income remains a mere fraction. Image source: Web screenshot

Chen Jing is not unaware of successful operational models: a pilot agrivoltaic greenhouse project in Anhui province, for example, employs specialised glass and supplemental lighting installed between the panels to distribute sunlight evenly throughout the greenhouse, ensuring crop yields inside remain on par with open-field cultivation. However, the light-splitting glass relies on foreign imports and carries a steep price tag, making large-scale adoption across China unfeasible at present.

In Chen Jing’s assessment, the sector’s unregulated growth is also tied to an absence of established standards.

“Germany has already enshrined regulations for agrivoltaics in law, governing parameters such as installation height, shading ratios, and crop yields. Any enterprise entering the space must adhere to these industry standards. We are currently drafting comparable guidelines for agrivoltaics here.”

At a minimum, any such standards must address: first, which crops to cultivate to ensure they suit the local climate, soil, and hydrology; second, how to integrate agricultural requirements from the design phase when determining parameters such as panel height and shading coverage.

III. Encroaching on Farmland: Do Solar Installations Stifle Agriculture?

Also serving to rein in the breakneck expansion of agrivoltaics are the increasingly stringent policies governing arable land protection boundaries and food security.

In principle, regulatory guidelines encourage solar developments to utilise derelict land, barren hillsides, and agricultural greenhouses, aligning with broader objectives for efficient land use. Historically, solar farms were predominantly large-scale, centralised installations spread across expansive tracts of uncultivated land in western China, such as the Gobi Desert.

● Photovoltaic panels on the slopes of Hebei and Inner Mongolia. Image: Foodthink

However, the western regions lack sufficient energy-intensive industries to absorb renewable electricity, and infrastructure for long-distance transmission remains underdeveloped. This once led to widespread curtailment of wind and solar power. Consequently, from 2013 onwards, photovoltaic companies began pivoting eastward.

Over the past decade, backed by local authorities, photovoltaic companies have repeatedly encroached upon arable land, and even prime agricultural plots.

In August 2023, a paper titled “Solar Energy Projects Pose a Risk to Food Security,” published in *Science* by Chinese scholar Li Zhongbin and his colleagues, highlighted that the geographic expansion of solar farms is encroaching on agricultural land. Data reveals that in 2017 alone, China’s primary grain-producing region—the North China Plain—saw solar panels installed across approximately 100 square kilometres, an area exceeding the combined footprint of Beijing’s Dongcheng and Xicheng districts.

● In March 2023, the Ministry of Natural Resources, together with the National Forestry and Grassland Administration and the National Energy Administration, issued a notice explicitly stipulating that solar arrays must not occupy arable land. In the wake of this directive, numerous provinces have rolled out updated land-use regulations for photovoltaic projects and launched inspections into existing solar farms built on farmland.

● According to *Yicai*, a 2022 solar farm project in a prefecture-level city encroached upon hundreds of mu of arable land, including a section of permanently protected prime farmland. Ultimately, sections of the project were dismantled. Image source: *Yicai* website

In recent years, it has not been uncommon for local authorities to uproot crops during harvest and let weeds reclaim the fields, artificially disguising arable land as abandoned fallow simply to secure approval for solar projects. Alongside this, cases of compelling villagers to sign land leases, or even outright seizing plots, have been equally frequent.

Take Shangbei Town in Xingtang County, Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province, for example: in April 2022, with a month still to go before the wheat harvest, a photovoltaic company bulldozed dozens of mu of wheat fields without having secured land lease contracts, sparking physical confrontations with local villagers.

Hu Zhanping candidly notes that his fieldwork across Shandong, Hebei, and Henan revealed a consistent pattern: nearly all photovoltaic agriculture projects encroach on farmland and marginalise smallholder farmers. The only exception he encountered was a subsided coal mine site in Jining, Shandong.

As the flooded excavation was unsuitable for farming, local farmers had relied on meagre compensation payments from the coal operator for years. When a solar company later mounted panels over the water, marketing it as an aquaculture-solar complementary model, they agreed to pay the farmers an additional land rent. Residents were also offered the chance to lease the water body for aquaculture.

Given that the land had already lost its agricultural value, any extra rental income was certainly a welcome bonus. In Hu’s view, this was one of the few cases where farmers appeared relatively content. However, he cautions, “A mere increase in land rent has not yet spurred broader village development, such as fostering new local industries.”

● A photovoltaic project installed over a contaminated water pit in Tianjin in 2017. This coincided with the rapid expansion phase of the “solar-plus” model, when every patch of land suitable for mounting panels held strong appeal for developers.

Chen Jing observed a similar pattern in Taishan, Guangdong. Companies lease multiple abandoned tidal flats and small fish ponds, consolidating them into large, contiguous fish farms to develop an integrated model of solar energy, aquaculture, and tourism. They raise tiger prawns and various fish species, attract visitors for recreational fishing, and local farmers earn income from land rentals.

“Farmers are no longer cultivating crops or raising fish, as the profits are too meagre. This isn’t confined to Guangdong; we’ve seen the same trend of farmers abandoning agriculture in Shandong and Jiangsu,” said Chen Jing.

IV. What Kind of Photovoltaic Agriculture Do Farmers Need?

Beyond top-down policy approaches focused on food security and the arable land red line, the farming communities most directly affected remain largely landless and voiceless.

What does agrivoltaics mean for farmers? And what kind of agrivoltaic systems do rural communities actually need?

“At present, farmers tend to benefit mainly from land lease payments in these solar projects. When it comes to agricultural production, it’s actually the agribusinesses or solar companies that reap the profits,” says Chen Jing.

Her fieldwork reveals that most agrivoltaic projects involve little engagement with local farmers. Occasionally, a few are hired as farm workers in the parks, but generally, farmers lack the necessary capacity to participate in these systems.

Consider the ‘solar-plus-greenhouse’ model. In practice, many farmers lack even basic greenhouse cultivation skills. “We visited villages in southern Tianjin where residents attempted their own greenhouse experiments. However, without adequate knowledge of carbon dioxide and temperature management, the planting efforts still failed,” Chen Jing notes.

A recent Foodthink article, Why Smallholders Are Reluctant to Grow Greenhouse Vegetables, examines in depth how technical barriers keep small-scale farmers out of greenhouse vegetable production. Layering photovoltaics onto greenhouses only raises the operational threshold for ordinary farming households.

II. Solar Power + Greenhouses: The Challenge of Complementary Agriculture and Solar Generation

Published by Foodthink