Denmark’s AGRISOL co-creation workshop journey began not in a conference room, but in a field. On April 29, the workshop organized by Food & Bio Cluster Denmark (FBCD) opened with a visit to Aarhus University’s research site at Foulumgaard, where participants saw a vertical agrivoltaic system developed under the Value4Farm project. Using smart crop rotation, bifacial fixed panels, and Power-to-X technology, the installation doubles as a windbreak for vegetable crops such as zucchini. It’s a glimpse of how APV can be woven directly into small-scale farming rather than replacing it.
From there, the group moved to Agro Business Park in Tjele for the main workshop, which brought together roughly a dozen participants spanning academia, farmers’ associations, agribusinesses and cooperatives, solar technology providers, municipalities, and national regulatory bodies. After presentations on AGRISOL’s early research and on European APV case studies, participants split into groups for a World Café-style co-creation session built around four themes: barriers, support needs, decision-support tools, and the requirements for AGRISOL’s future Stakeholder Engagement Platform (ASEP).
Much of what emerged confirmed AGRISOL’s preliminary research: the main obstacle to APV in Denmark isn’t technology, but a fragmented policy landscape. Land-use planning, energy regulation, and agricultural support schemes each treat APV differently, and no harmonized national framework yet exists to bring them together. Grid capacity constraints compounded the picture, alongside a recurring theme: municipalities themselves often lack the guidance and tools to evaluate APV proposals consistently, leaving local authorities under-equipped for the role.
Participants grouped the practical barriers into four buckets: unclear regulation and inconsistent permitting; high upfront costs paired with business models that remain highly case-specific; grid access and infrastructure limits; and a general shortage of comparable, trustworthy data on how APV systems perform and affect yields over time.
However, the mood wasn’t pessimistic: Denmark’s high public acceptance of renewable energy, mounting pressure on land use, and a mature energy grid were all cited as conditions that put the country in a strong starting position, along with a growing pipeline of demonstration and pilot sites lending the technology credibility. Farmers in the room were drawn to the income-diversification angle, while several participants proposed reviving a distinctly Danish model: cooperative (“guild”) ownership structures like those that powered the country’s wind turbine boom decades ago.
A dot-voting exercise at the end of the day sharpened the picture further. On barriers, the clearest consensus formed around knowledge gaps ahead of structural issues like grid limitations and thin technical capacity among permitting officers. On support needs, participants placed the highest priority on clear government targets and tangible local benefits, such as continued farming activity and job creation. Ideas like a dedicated feed-in premium for APV-generated electricity, or permitting advantages for APV projects, drew notable but secondary support.
On tools, the suggestion was to go for plain facts over complexity: participants wanted straightforward information on which crops suit APV, real testimonials from farmers who have tried it, and accessible ways to calculate the numbers before committing. Early, low-key dialogue with local communities was flagged as equally important as the technical content itself.
The workshop also surfaced a wider strategic finding: real synergy between AGRISOL and two other initiatives active in the same space, AGRIVOLT and SOLBRUK, opening the door to shared knowledge and better-aligned recommendations going forward. Participants were clear that this was only a starting point, and several asked explicitly for more workshops, more interactive formats, and continued opportunities to shape the tools AGRISOL is building, including the APV Assessment Tool and the ASEP platform, once these move from concept to something they can test.
