On April 15, Project Partner Stowarzyszenie Agroekoton (AGEK) hosted a co-creation workshop in Warsaw as part of our project, bringing together a broad range of stakeholders to discuss the outlook for agrivoltaics (APV) in the country. The session combined introductory presentations with hands-on co-creation activities aimed at identifying the barriers, needs, and opportunities shaping APV development in Poland.
Participants came from a wide cross-section of the sector: agricultural research and education institutions, photovoltaic technology providers, farmers and farmer associations, financial institutions and investors, NGOs specializing in renewable energy and efficiency, and representatives of Poland’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and regional government. The event opened with an introduction to the AGRISOL project and to existing APV case studies, followed by stakeholders first-hand perspectives.
The workshop confirmed several findings from AGRISOL’s earlier desk research: an overwhelming majority of participants identified legislative barriers as the single greatest obstacle to APV uptake in Poland. Current rules governing land use, energy generation, and agricultural taxation were drafted without APV in mind, meaning that installing an agrivoltaic system can cause a farmer to lose access to agricultural subsidies and tax benefits, making APV investment indirectly but significantly costly.
Participants also raised a series of related challenges, such as grid connections, which shifted from the older net-metering system, letting farmers bank summer energy production for winter use, to the newer net-billing scheme, seen as far less favorable given that APV generates most electricity when it is least profitable to sell.
Other barriers included low awareness of APV among farmers, a lack of convincing local business cases, and the opportunity-cost of APV compared with alternatives such as traditional rooftop or ground-mounted solar and biogas.
Despite this challenging picture, participants pointed to several opportunities and drivers for the sector: the possibility of drawing on legislation already in place in other EU countries such as Germany or the Czech Republic; the strategic value of APV for energy self-sufficiency and crisis preparedness, a theme that resonated strongly given the war in Ukraine and its lessons on the risks of centralized energy production; and the potential appeal of removing existing barriers to subsidies, rather than creating new incentives, as a lower-cost way to support uptake.
On the basis of these discussions, participants co-created a set of support measures, including long-term energy storage solutions to bridge the mismatch between farmers’ and energy companies’ needs; support in building a credible, locally relevant business case for APV; educational initiatives focused on practical, Poland-specific case studies; decision-support tools to help farmers compare APV against other investment options; and, above all, legislative reform, including the idea of broadening the definition of APV to cover any solar energy production on agricultural land, giving farmers more flexibility to combine APV with conventional PV.
The session also gathered early input on the APV Assessment Tool and the ASEP platform that AGRISOL will be developing, with participants highlighting the need for translation into Polish, comparability with similar sites elsewhere, ease of use, and the ability to compare crop yields and economic viability across locations.
Looking ahead, participants expressed strong interest in continuing the dialogue between stakeholder groups, many noting that the workshop was their first real opportunity to engage directly with actors from other parts of the value chain, and in staying involved as the Assessment Tool and ASEP platform move toward a testable prototype.
