Photovoltaics, Agriculture, and Ecology: From Agrivoltaics to Ecovoltaics

One of the challenges facing our modern society is successfully balancing growing energy demand, demographic and food pressures, and ecological and environmental emergencies. This book provides an overview of a rapidly evolving field: modern photovoltaics capable of combining the energy and ecological transitions. While solar photovoltaics is a well-established technical solution in the energy sector, its development can compete for land use with agricultural land or natural sites. New solutions are rapidly emerging: the installation of solar farms on brownfield sites, agrivoltaics—which combines agricultural activity with energy production on the same land—and ecovoltaics, which makes use of the unused space beneath solar panels by developing ecological solutions that provide benefits to nature. These innovations are part of the effort to preserve terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, halt the decline of animal and plant biodiversity, and ultimately contribute to the development of a new model of sustainable development and a green economy.

Authors: Claude Grison, Lucie Cases, Mailys Le Moigne, Martine Hossaert-McKey

ISTE Publications
July 2021

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