California Forever to Fund Important UC Davis Research on Combining Solar Energy and Agriculture Production with Habitat Conservation
Complementary Land Use (Agrivoltaics) Represents Promising Approach to Renewable Energy Generation, Food Production, and Climate Change Mitigation
(Solano County, Calif.) - California Forever is excited to announce an initial gift to UC Davis’s Energy and Efficiency Institute's Agrivoltaics Support Fund to help advance research into ways to use land for solar energy production at the same time as agricultural activities and habitat conservation - also known as agrivoltaics/ecovoltaics, agrisolar, or agrophotovoltaics (APV).
California Forever also released new renderings depicting what the combined use of land will look like that are available to download here.
As California works to meet its 2045 100% renewable energy mandate for the electric grid, demand for space to install solar farms grows every year. However, much of the land which solar developers are targeting is currently used for agriculture. Rather than using land solely for solar energy production or agriculture, agrivoltaics promises the opportunity to maximize land use efficiency by integrating all of these uses together.
“As part of our East Solano Homes, Jobs, and Clean Energy initiative, we are proposing to build one of the largest solar farms in California. It will have upwards of 2 gigawatts of capacity for export on to the grid — enough to power up to 1.5 million homes across Northern California,” said Bronson Johnson, Head of Infrastructure and Sustainability at California Forever. “We’re seeking solar developers to install a significant number of clean, green energy sources on our lands to help materially advance California’s renewable energy goals. We are excited about the opportunity to use agrivoltaics to combine solar energy production with agriculture and habitat restoration on the same parcels of land in a way that is both economically and environmentally sustainable, while preserving the character of the area.”
UC Davis is a global leader in the study of sustainability, and California Forever plans for this to be the first of many collaborations. The company will look to UC Davis’ broad expertise to inform the stewardship and development of California Forever’s lands in Solano County.
About California Forever
California Forever was created to bring back the California Dream. We want to do that by building a new community, solar farms, and open space projects in east Solano County. Doing so would bring new paths to middle-class home ownership, thousands of good paying local jobs, and a new source of clean power for the entire region. Our company owns more than 60,000 acres of land in southeastern Solano County. We manage these properties across four divisions: community building, energy, agriculture, and habitat conservation. We are committed to Solano County, and we look forward to being a good steward of our lands for generations to come.