On April 23, our Spanish Partner Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias de España (AGAL) hosted its first AGRISOL co-creation workshop, bringing together key stakeholders working on agrivoltaics in the country. The goal was to encourage knowledge-sharing among people and organizations with a stake in agrivoltaics, helping push its adoption forward across the farming sector.
The meeting drew participants from research institutions such as the universities of Córdoba and Madrid Polytechnic (UPM), as well as IMIDA; from public administration, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA), FEGA, and IDAE; and from industry, with organizations like UNEF, ANPIER, Powerfultree, and ENGER taking part. Civil society groups were also represented, including the Platform for a New Energy Model and the European Climate Foundation.
In the first part of the day, AGAL presented early findings from AGRISOL’s desk research and surveys. Among the key takeaways was a comparison of six AGRISOL countries (Germany, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Spain), which revealed their shared challenges. In particular, regulatory uncertainty and cumbersome authorization procedures were flagged as relevant common issues. The findings also pointed to strong technological innovation in Germany and Denmark, along with robust investment momentum in Italy.
So far, the project has reviewed roughly 100 agrivoltaic initiatives, most of them launched within the last five years. About half have a capacity below 1 MW, while those tied to livestock farms tend to be considerably larger, exceeding 10 MW.
During the session, Spain’s Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE) shared context on the national landscape, promoting the Agrivoltaics Incentive Program, which has received 62 applications totaling over €150.9 million in investment and 151.4 MW of associated capacity.
Speakers stressed how crucial these incentives are for sector growth, given the high cost of infrastructure. They also noted that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is being updated to ease access to funding for projects that preserve farming activity without significantly reducing productive land.
Participants also reviewed three operating agrivoltaic projects in Europe, illustrating the technology’s range of applications and adaptability to different crops. These included Spain’s Huerto Carrasco, a nearly twenty-year-old project now seen as a national benchmark; Italy’s La Svolta, notable for its use in vineyards; and the Wadenoijen project in the Netherlands, which shows how agrivoltaics can work with less common crops in Spain, such as redcurrants.
Throughout the day, attendees identified four main barriers to agrivoltaic development: striking the right balance between crops’ agronomic needs and the technical demands of solar installations; the high upfront investment costs, which can limit large-scale rollout; cumbersome authorization procedures, often slowed by administrative inefficiency; and the need for clearer regulation and stronger institutional backing.
On the positive side, participants pointed to several success factors, such as good design that properly integrates crops with the solar system, which can maintain or even improve the quality and yield of agricultural output. They also highlighted the added agronomic benefits these systems can bring, such as lower irrigation needs, a more favorable microclimate for plants, and reduced disease incidence. The idea that got the least support was linking larger-scale projects to lower per-unit costs.
In the closing part of the co-creation session, the group discussed support measures going forward. These included the importance of proper site assessment and feasibility studies to set projects up for success from the outset, easier access to financing and stronger investment readiness, and market and business-model studies to better identify opportunities and guide decision-making.
The day wrapped up with a visit to the agrivoltaic installation at ETSIAAB’s experimental fields, where researchers are studying various crops using a fixed-panel system. The visit sparked new ideas for optimizing module structures and prompted discussion of technical issues such as the potential effects of agricultural spray drift on solar panels and how rainwater runoff concentration might affect soil erosion.
