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Welcome back to Current Climate. Solar continues to have a moment as a fast, cheap way to boost the power supply, particularly as electricity demand surges and the war in Iran triggers price spikes for oil and natural gas. It’s also been finding its way onto farms as beneficial new income source for farmers.
While California is looking to use tens of thousands of acres of fallow agricultural land for massive solar fields, idled by dwindling water supplies, in other parts of the country, solar is being integrated into fields actively growing crops or raising livestock. In the emerging field of agrivoltaics, university and government researchers are finding that solar fits in surprisingly well. Upsides include shading provided by solar panels built over farm fields, spaced to provide sufficient sunlight for crops to grow while shielding them from the day’s most intense sunlight and heat.
The panels also help prevent water from evaporating from the soil, and provide shade for livestock during the hottest times of the day. In exchange, plants growing beneath them emit water vapor that helps cool the panels from below, improving their efficiency, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
A farm near Nashville operated by Solar Ranch is even testing to see if solar panels designed to pivot to capture the maximum amount of sunlight throughout the day can become a big help to cattle ranchers. The 40-acre project in Christiana, Tennessee, is spending the next year determining if, as expected, cattle thrive as well beneath solar panels as different crops do – and if ranchers and dairy farmers are willing to make swaths of rural land available in exchange for a steady new revenue stream.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration completely halted the Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP, created in 2008 to provide assistance for farmers or rural co-ops to install their own solar and wind power systems, yielding big savings in energy costs, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Agrivoltaic projects in which private companies lease land from farmers to install solar power systems, without disrupting growing operations, could help mitigate the loss of REAP funds. But if a new farm bill manages to restore them, something that has bipartisan support, farm-based solar could become a major power source.
The Big Read
Energy Security Is The Real Driver Of The Clean Energy Transition
Can you imagine yourself and your life without access to energy? Rising prices have long dominated the debate over renewables. But recent geopolitical shocks are shifting the focus toward something more fundamental: security of supply and who controls it.
For years, the transition to renewable energy has been criticized for increasing costs and introducing volatility into energy systems. Those concerns intensified following the disruption of Russian gas supplies to Europe after the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. In countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom, rising electricity prices were often linked to the rapid expansion of renewables, reinforcing the perception that the transition carried an economic penalty.
The argument gained further traction in the wake of Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness, which pointed to higher energy costs as a structural disadvantage compared to the U.S. and China.
But price is only part of the story. Recent events are forcing a broader reassessment of what matters most in energy systems. Availability, resilience, and control are now moving to the forefront.
Hot Topic
Trek Bicycles CEO John Burke on growing e-bike business and cost impacts from the Iran war
E-bikes have been the biggest development in the cycling industry for several years. What portion of your sales are now electric?
It’s somewhere between 40% and 50%. It’s a big number.
Given the tech they involve – batteries and motors – how has that altered the company?
The keyword is evolve. We’ve got a lot of really smart people here and we develop the highest-end bikes in the world. We also like to make consumers happy. And when we take a look at e-bikes, we kind of use the same product development process on e-bikes that we use on racing bikes. We’ve been able to come out with some really good e-bike products and you’ll see a lot more of those in years to come.
Are you getting into the delivery e-bike market, making them for Amazon and FedEx, as some of your competitors are?
No. We’ll stay focused on consumers.
There are a lot of different things that we could do. We want to focus on where we can be the best in the world. That’s a little bit of a different animal. I mean, we could definitely do it, but we’ve got a lot of other things on our plate right now.
What are the best growth areas for Trek?
Pick a card, any card. I think e-bikes are a big growth opportunity for Trek. Europe is a huge opportunity for Trek. Asia’s a really big opportunity for Trek mountain bikes.
Is there still a lot of opportunity in the e-bike space?
I think that market’s just going to continue to grow. If you take a look, it started in Europe and Europe was five to 10 years ahead of the U.S. It continues to grow in Europe. If you take a step back and you zoom out, we would be a lot better off if people rode bikes more often. It’s a healthy way to travel. It’s environmentally a good thing to do. We’ve seen since the pandemic that governments are putting more and more investment into cycling and pedestrian infrastructure. It gets you away from a phone. We have a mental health crisis going on in this country and anything that gets people outside and exercising is good for society.
You rely on an international supply chain for materials and components. Is the fighting in Iran and shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz affecting your costs?
Yes. I think every supplier is asking us for price increases. I just got an email on the amount that freight costs have gone up in the last month. It’s off the charts. … That email was just within the United States, just moving freight from Trek warehouses to retailers.
Are the costs of aluminum, steel and other materials being impacted?
They are. Some more than others – carbon fiber materials, things that have to be moved have had a big impact. I don’t think people totally understand the global economy in which we live. We have a big factory in Europe that’s outside of Dresden and all that freight moves through the Strait of Hormuz.
What Else We’re Reading
Securities and Exchange Commission moves to scrap Biden-era climate risk reporting rule (Reuters)
China’s truck drivers are going electric as gas prices soar (Bloomberg)
Europe’s quest for green steel. It all hinges on green hydrogen (Canary Media)
Peering into Earth’s climate past is getting ever more bizarre (Scientific American)