Data centers will draw 106 gigawatts of power by 2035, more than a 150% increase from current usage, and with the majority of this growth being in rural sites as urban sites get scarcer and scarcer. Driven increasingly by data center growth, demand for and production of renewable energy sources is also growing at a significant rate: solar, on its own, made up 81% of new US electrical generation capacity in 2024, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
At the same time, under OBBBA, utility-scale solar must begin construction by July 4, 2026, or, alternatively, be placed in service by December 31, 2027, in order to keep the tax credit. As such, there is increasing interest in “getting in” on the utility-scale solar wave while the tax credits last, in order to capture the 30% investment tax credit, and interest in land with consistent sunlight for renewable development is booming. This is where agrivoltaics comes in. There are methods to utilize agrivoltaics beyond what is visible at first glance.
The current main blocker to converting land with consistent sun into solar farms is local counties: more than 100 rural US counties have banned or severely restricted utility-scale solar in recent years. In Arizona, the state House passed a bill this year that would classify building a utility-scale solar or wind farm within four miles of a home as a misdemeanor. In addition, roughly 30% of utility-scale wind and solar projects have been cancelled during siting between 2018 and 2023, largely due to community opposition, ordinances, zoning, and other social factors.
Agrivoltaics can, in this context, function as a market-access and permitting strategy. Agrivoltaics is the process of using land for solar power generation and agriculture at the same time. By strategically planning out and placing tilted solar panels above crops or farm animals, solar panels can harvest excess sunlight, without hindering agricultural capacity.
Now, what does this mean for solar market-access and permitting? A recent academic study, cited by the U. Penn Kleinman Center, found that solar developers who propose a project with agrivoltaics are more likely to gain local government approval and the necessary permits to build the project. At the same time, according to a survey done by Michigan Technological University faculty, 81.8% of survey respondents said they would be more likely to support a solar project in their community if it combined energy and agriculture. Such dual-use framing of projects can unlock support within communities for solar projects.
Figure 1. Roughly 30% of utility-scale solar projects were cancelled during siting between 2018 and 2023, largely due to community opposition (LBNL); in a Michigan Technological University survey, 81.8% of respondents said they would be more likely to support a solar project if it combined energy and agriculture.
However, elevated crop agrivoltaics can run 50-100% more per MW. The key here is to utilize methods such as sheep grazing, which adds little or no capital cost and cuts O&M by replacing mowing. This hedge pays where siting risk is highest, and grazing makes the premium small enough that it almost always does. In other words, the permitting benefit comes from keeping land in real agriculture, and grazing delivers that at a near-zero premium.
Virginia is an interesting case: it leads US data center grid demand at roughly 12.1 GW in 2025, up 30% from 9.3 GW the year before, and close to two thirds of the state’s counties currently ban or severely restrict large solar farms. Governor Spanberger of Virginia signed HB 711/SB 347, taking effect July 1, 2026, which voids/bans blanket local solar bans, as well as requiring localities to review each project on its merits. The state also formally defined agrivoltaics this year (signed April 6). The permit-free carve-out for dual-use solar on farmland, HB 1091, did not pass though.
What this means in practice is that the fight moves from county ordinances down to individual project reviews. In my work on energy siting and rate cases in the West, the projects that survive local opposition are the ones that can answer the farmland objection before it gets raised. Agrivoltaics, and grazing in particular, is how you answer it.
In sum, the OBBBA begin-construction deadline is July 4, 2026. Developers who are still fighting permitting battles past that date lose the 30% ITC. They do not have time to wait out local opposition through the normal hearing cycle, which can drag on for months or years in contested counties.
Agrivoltaics make that timeline shorter by taking the farmland objection off the table before it forms. I think developers should be pricing dual-use (grazing first, since the capital premium is close to zero) into siting decisions the same way they price interconnection costs or land leases. In Arizona, where I am based, the Corporation Commission repealed the state’s renewable energy standard entirely in March, and I wrote about the investment signal that it sends in OGEL Energy Law Journal.
When the institutional floor for renewables gets pulled, every project has to win support on its own merits at the local level. Where county bans are spreading, and right now that is roughly a quarter of the country, it is increasingly the difference between a project that gets sited and one that dies in committee.
Arif Gasilov is partner at Gasilov Group
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
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