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

Power generated above, crops grown below—one piece of land yielding two streams of income. “Agrivoltaics” claims to deliver multiple benefits, including clean electricity, efficient land use, agricultural modernisation, and rural development; it is often viewed as a win-win technological innovation to simultaneously address food, energy, and climate issues.

According to scholars, agrivoltaics has seen exponential growth in China over the past decade: from just two grid-connected projects in 2011 to over 400 planned or connected projects nationwide by 2021, with a total installed capacity exceeding 40GW.

● Orchards and farmland in a county in central Shandong were requisitioned for the development of agrivoltaics; since then, some of the land has been abandoned and is now overgrown with weeds. Photo: Foodthink reader

But looking closer at the land, it becomes apparent that in the vast majority of projects, there is only photovoltaics and no agriculture—the plots shaded by the panels are often abandoned or produce low yields.

Take, for example, an agrivoltaics project in a county in western Shandong province. A company constructed 460 solar greenhouses on over 1,000 mu of farmland, generating a stable 60 million kWh of electricity for the grid annually. However, only a handful of these greenhouses have been rented to villagers for rearing poultry or storage; the rest remain entirely idle.

These agrivoltaics projects—branded as “green development” but in reality functioning as land grabs—are not isolated cases within the country. Why have these initiatives failed to deliver the multiple benefits they initially promised? Is agrivoltaics, in the name of green development, actually helping farmers or hindering them?

1. Agrivoltaics: When Overcapacity Meets Green Transition

After 2013, agrivoltaics began to be rolled out on a large scale across central and eastern China. The driving force was not a demand for renewable energy from rural communities or the agricultural sector, but rather the need to absorb domestic overcapacity in photovoltaic production.

Following 2000, clean energy policies and subsidies in the US and Europe stimulated a boom in China’s photovoltaic manufacturing industry. Prior to 2011, 95% of photovoltaic modules were exported. By 2011, China’s output of photovoltaic modules accounted for nearly 80% of global production, making it the undisputed world leader.

Soon after, the US and Europe launched anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations into Chinese photovoltaic products and began imposing steep anti-dumping and countervailing duties. To find a new outlet for this capacity, the Chinese government introduced a series of policies—including tax cuts, streamlined project approvals and investment subsidies—to encourage the construction of domestic photovoltaic power stations. Seizing the opportunity, photovoltaic companies embarked on a new wave of aggressive land acquisition.

●Smog across the North China Plain created the political momentum for China’s green energy transition, as the desire of local governments for industrial upgrades aligned perfectly with the shift in photovoltaic production capacity. Pictured: the smog in Chaoyang District, Beijing, in December 2011. Image © Greenpeace/Wang Yi Kun

Photovoltaic (PV) power generation requires abundant sunlight and vast expanses of flat land. In theory, the western regions—with their sparse populations, ample land, and plentiful sunshine—are ideal for PV development. However, early progress was hindered by challenges in power consumption and transmission. According to a Greenpeace report, the phenomenon of ‘curtailment’ (wasted solar energy) was most prevalent across five northwestern provinces in the first half of 2016, with curtailment rates in Xinjiang and Gansu reaching 33% and 32% respectively.

Consequently, policy began to encourage the development of distributed PV projects in the land-scarce central and eastern regions. This forced companies to find ways to integrate PV with existing industries to extract multiple benefits from limited land resources, leading to the emergence of the ‘PV+’ model.

●Solar panels can be installed on rooftops and over sewage pits; the ‘PV+’ model can also be integrated with fisheries, desertification control, and livestock farming. Over the past decade, the most widespread implementations have been PV combined with cropping, fisheries, and forestry. Left: hakunamatata; Right: Foodthink

Hu Zhanping, an associate professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of North China Electric Power University, told Foodthink: “In previous years, governments at all levels provided substantial support for distributed photovoltaic (PV) power generation. Subsidies of around 0.5 yuan per kWh were commonplace, and in some regions, combined subsidies could even reach 1 yuan per kWh.”

Research reveals that a 20MW agrivoltaic project run by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zhongjieneng in Weinan, Shaanxi, enjoyed extensive policy preferences. As the first central state-owned enterprise attracted by the county government’s investment initiatives, the project’s land transfer costs—amounting to over 2.8 million yuan for more than 1,000 mu of land over the first three years—were fully subsidised by the government, and the project also benefited from a “three-year exemption and three-year half-reduction” tax incentive. With a benchmark feed-in tariff of 1 yuan per kWh and a full-lifecycle, full-capacity subsidy of 0.6654 yuan per kWh granted by the National Energy Administration for a period of 25 years, the annual income from electricity sales and subsidies approached 47 million yuan.

“Consequently, even when faced with significant resistance regarding land transfers, photovoltaic companies still had a powerful incentive to pursue these projects. To a certain extent, this became a key driver of the agrivoltaics boom in China since 2013,” said Hu Zhanping.

II. PV + Greenhouses: The Struggle for Complementarity

During the period when photovoltaic (PV) agriculture projects surged forward under a nationwide green light, their business model was packaged as a compelling narrative: farmers would lease their land to PV farms to secure rental income, while also finding employment within the farm, thereby gaining two sources of income.

Once familiar with the daily operation of the greenhouses, farmers could then rent their own, upgrading their status to ‘agricultural entrepreneurs’. The rooftop PV panels would provide free electricity for the greenhouse, with any surplus sold back to the national grid. Following technical guidance and order requirements from the company, the leaseholders would grow organic vegetables and sell them back to the company at prices above the market rate, yielding economic returns several times higher than those of standard greenhouses of the same size.

In reality, however, this scenario is rarely encountered.

Firstly, as all growth depends on the sun, PV competes with agriculture not only for land but for light.

In Shouguang, Shandong, Hu Zhanping found that smallholders were reluctant to install PV on their own greenhouse roofs. This was partly because it severely hindered the growth of vegetables such as tomatoes and cucumbers, and partly because the investment and maintenance costs were prohibitively high—costs they were neither willing nor able to bear.

Consequently, PV companies often opted to build new greenhouses specifically for the panels, limiting the crops to shade-loving varieties like leafy greens and mushrooms. ‘It is very difficult to achieve actual agricultural productivity in PV greenhouses; I have yet to see a successful case in the field,’ Hu said.

Over the past two years, Chen Jing, a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Energy Transition and Social Development, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, surveyed PV greenhouses in Beijing, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Guangdong, finding many had been abandoned.

‘A few years ago, the “PV + Greenhouse” concept was heavily hyped, and many were built. People flocked to grow cash crops, such as mushrooms,’ she said. However, while mushroom yields increased, prices plummeted, leading to low returns or even losses, leaving many unwilling to continue farming.

● A Xinhua News Agency report on a ‘mushroom-light complementarity’ PV agriculture project in Zhejiang; the image shows mushroom farmers checking the hole-piercing of the substrate blocks. Source: Web screenshot

From her perspective, the issue lies in the fact that photovoltaic companies typically lack agricultural expertise. They venture into farming solely to secure PV quotas, only to discover that the operations are not sustainably profitable. Since the designation of the land as agricultural restricts its use for other purposes, they simply abandon it.

The agrivoltaic project in Shandong Province mentioned at the start of this article is another case in point. It initially claimed a planned annual electricity output of over 100 million kWh, with the greenhouses producing 70,000 tonnes of mushrooms and raising 150,000 geese, while creating more than 500 stable local jobs. However, due to design flaws, temperatures inside the greenhouses were too low during winter to support mushroom cultivation or goose farming, leaving the vast majority of the structures vacant.

● Many agrivoltaic projects are also actively developing agri-tourism. In 2017, the Weinan agrivoltaic project mentioned above generated a monthly income of over 15,000 yuan through spring and summer picking, yet this remained a drop in the ocean compared to revenue from electricity sales and policy incentives. Image source: Website screenshot

It is not that Chen Jing has never seen successful examples: a pilot agrivoltaic greenhouse project in Anhui uses special glass materials and supplemental lighting technology installed between the PV panels to ensure sunlight is distributed evenly within the greenhouse, guaranteeing that crop yields are no lower than those of open-field farming. However, the light-diffusing glass is imported and the costs are exorbitant, making large-scale promotion within China difficult at present.

In Chen Jing’s view, the haphazard development of agrivoltaics is also linked to a lack of standards.

“Germany has already regulated the height, shading ratio, and crop output of agrivoltaics at the legislative level; if companies want to operate, they must comply with specific industry standards. We are currently researching and developing standards for agrivoltaics as well.”

At the very least, standards must consider: first, what to plant to suit the local climate, soil, and water; and second, how to integrate agriculture from the outset when designing parameters such as the height and shading area of the PV panels.

III. Occupying Farmland: Does Photovoltaics Hinder Agriculture?

Putting the brakes on the runaway growth of agrivoltaics are the increasingly stringent ‘farmland red lines’ and food security policies of recent years.

In principle, policy encourages the construction of PV projects on abandoned land, barren mountains and slopes, and in agricultural greenhouses, as such land use aligns with the principle of efficient land utilisation. In the early years, PV power stations were primarily centralised, distributed across vast stretches of wasteland in the west, such as the Gobi Desert.

● Solar panels on the hillsides of the Hebei and Inner Mongolia regions. Image: Foodthink

However, the west lacked sufficient power-consuming industries to absorb the new energy, and conditions for long-distance power transmission were underdeveloped. This led to widespread ‘curtailment’ of wind and solar power, prompting photovoltaic (PV) companies to shift their focus eastwards after 2013.

Over the last decade, with the backing of local governments, PV companies have frequently encroached upon cultivated land, and in some cases, even permanent basic farmland.

In August 2023, a paper titled ‘Solar projects pose risks to food security’, published in the journal *Science* by Chinese scholar Li Zhongyuan and colleagues, pointed out that the spatial expansion of photovoltaic power stations is encroaching on agricultural land. Data shows that in 2017 alone, approximately 100 square kilometres of solar panels were installed in the North China Plain—one of China’s primary grain-producing regions—an area exceeding the combined landmass of Beijing’s Dongcheng and Xicheng districts.

● In March 2023, the Ministry of Natural Resources, in conjunction with the National Forestry and Grassland Administration and the National Energy Administration, issued the ‘Notice on Supporting the Development of the Photovoltaic Power Generation Industry and Regulating Land Use Management’. This notice explicitly stated that photovoltaic arrays must not occupy cultivated land. Subsequently, several provinces released updated detailed regulations on land use for PV and began auditing instances of farmland encroachment.

● According to a report by *Yicai Daily*, a photovoltaic power station project in a certain prefecture-level city occupied hundreds of mu of cultivated land in 2022, including sections of permanent basic farmland; consequently, some of the projects were dismantled. Image source: *Yicai Daily* official website

In recent years, there have been absurd instances where governments pulled up crops during harvest season or allowed weeds to overgrow, simply to disguise cultivated land as ‘abandoned’ to ensure PV projects passed approval. During this period, it has also been common for villagers to be coerced into signing land lease contracts, or for land to be seized outright.

Take the case of Shangbei Town in Xingtang County, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province: in April 2022, with the wheat harvest still a month away, a PV company levelled dozens of mu of wheat fields before any land lease contracts had been signed, resulting in physical altercations with villagers.

Hu Zhanping candidly noted that during his field research in Shandong, Hebei, and Henan, he found that the vast majority of ‘agrivoltaic’ projects encroached upon cultivated land and marginalised smallholder farmers. The sole exception was a coal mine subsidence area in Jining, Shandong.

Because the flooded mine pits were unsuitable for agriculture, farmers had relied on meagre compensation from the coal mining company for years. Later, a PV company installed panels over the ponds, claiming a ‘fishery-agriculture-solar complementarity’ model, and paid the farmers additional land rent. Local farmers were also able to lease the ponds for fish farming.

As the land had already lost its agricultural value, any additional rental income was welcomed. In Hu Zhanping’s view, this was one of the few cases where farmers were relatively satisfied; however, he noted that ‘the increase in land rent alone has not driven the overall development of the village, such as by stimulating other industries’.

● A 2017 photovoltaic project atop a sewage pit in Tianjin. At the time, the ‘PV+’ model was expanding rapidly, and every single inch of land where panels could be installed was highly attractive to companies.

Chen Jing witnessed a similar pattern in Taishan, Guangdong. Companies leased multiple abandoned mudflats and small fish ponds, converting them into large, contiguous ponds to develop a combination of solar power, fisheries, and tourism. By farming tiger prawns and fish, they attracted tourists for angling, while farmers earned income through land rentals.

“’Farmers have stopped tilling the land or raising fish because the returns are too low. This isn’t just happening in Guangdong; we’ve seen the same trend of farmers abandoning their trade in Shandong and Jiangsu as well,’ said Chen Jing.

IV. What kind of agrivoltaics do farmers actually need?

Beyond the top-down governance frameworks of food security and the “red line” for arable land, the farmers directly affected remain landless and voiceless.

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

“As it stands, farmers benefit primarily from land rental payments in these photovoltaic projects. However, when it comes to agricultural production, it is actually the agricultural or solar companies that reap the rewards,” says Chen Jing.

Her research revealed that most agrivoltaic projects have little interaction with local farmers; occasionally, some are hired as farmhands to work in the parks, as the majority of farmers lack the capacity to participate in agrivoltaics.

Take “solar-plus-greenhouse” as an example. In reality, many farmers do not even possess the techniques for greenhouse cultivation. “When we visited southern Tianjin, local villagers attempted their own greenhouse experiments, but the crops failed because they lacked the knowledge to control CO2 concentrations and temperature,” Chen Jing explains.

A recent Foodthink article, “Why are Smallholder Farmers Reluctant to Grow Greenhouse Vegetables?”, also provides a detailed analysis of how smallholders are barred by the technical barriers of greenhouse farming. Adding photovoltaics to the mix only increases the operational difficulty for ordinary farmers.

II. PV + Greenhouses: The Struggle for Complementarity

Published by Foodthink