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Solar panels above, fish below: That’s the idea behind aquavoltaics, an emerging way to pair solar power with fish farming. Freshwater aquaculture produces more than 160 million tons of fish, crabs, and shrimp a year, emitting an estimated 438 million tons of CO₂ equivalents (tCO₂eq). A new study finds that covering the world’s aquaculture ponds with floating solar panels could generate nearly as much electricity as the United States uses, far more than enough to offset the industry’s carbon footprint.
Photovoltaic electricity is Earth’s most abundant potential source of renewable energy, but it requires lots of surface area. So people have tried to combine it with other types of land use, spawning agrivoltaics, in which solar panels are spaced across farm fields or pastures—harvesting a fraction of the incoming sunlight without appreciably reducing crop yields. People have also tried covering lakes, canals, and reservoirs with photovoltaic panels—but the wildly fluctuating levels and large size of these water bodies present major challenges. Aquaculture ponds, in contrast, are generally small and shallow, with consistent water levels.
In the new study, the authors analyzed satellite imagery and other data to estimate the total global area of aquaculture ponds. They identified 50,000 square km of these ponds worldwide, of which only 423 square km currently host water-surface photovoltaics. Some 97 percent of this  aquavoltaic area was in China, with most of the rest in Vietnam, South Korea, Thailand, and Israel.
 
 
So what if the entire 50,000 square km of ponds were 40 percent covered with photovoltaics? The authors estimated that the electricity generated (4,100 TWhr/yr) could replace enough fossil fuel-derived energy to avoid 2.5 billion tCO₂eq per year—nearly six times the current emissions of aquaculture worldwide. This electricity production would concentrate along the coastlines of South and East Asia (including Indonesia and the Philippines), with additional hotspots in coastal regions of the Middle East, Egypt, Southern Europe, Central America, Mexico, South America, and the U.S.
This locally produced power could cover the current national electricity needs of Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Myanmar, the Philippines, Cambodia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. This aquavoltaic energy would be produced in non-industrial regions that are often not well connected to larger power grids—potentially sustaining over 800 small- and medium-sized cities worldwide.
These calculations rest on baselines that will need to be refined for different regions, fish and crustacean species—including the assumption that 40 percent coverage of the water surface won’t compromise aquaculture yields. But it raises the possibility that aquavoltaics—a sector that didn’t even exist prior to 2010—could help drive our transition to renewable energy.
Xia, et al. “The global potential of aquavoltaics for power generation and offsetting the carbon footprint of freshwater aquaculture.” Nature Food, 2026.
Photo: IMAGO/Xinhua/Alamy Images
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