
Project AGRIPV-ER
Excerpt
Agrivoltaics for improved resilience in the water-energy-food nexus: application to the Euro-Mediterranean region
Jordi Bardosa, Research engineer, Ecole Polytechnique
Reconciling water and energy needs with food security are not necessarily mutually exclusive objectives. In fact, adopting a holistic and integrated approach to decision-making on water, energy and food can increase the resilience of energy and food systems. Recent research has investigated the potential benefits of agriculture combined with solar photovoltaic (PV) infrastructure – known as “agrivoltaics” (AV) – on food production, irrigation water requirements and energy generation. The AgriPV-ER project is investigating the AV solution with promising implications for food production, water savings and renewable energy production. Much work is still needed to assess the benefits and limitations of AV across the nexus, minimize its negative environmental impacts and maximize its positive externalities. The Euro-Mediterranean area is a key location where drastic adaptation measures need to be taken quickly to cope with growing water scarcity and food demand, and to develop renewable energies for power generation.
Keywords: Agrivoltaic optimization, environmental impact assessment, water-energy-food nexus, life cycle analysis
Tasks
Our researches
Practical implementation
AGRIPV-ER will seek to optimize the management of an existing AV farm operated by the project team near Paris, with holistic, dynamic and non-intrusive monitoring of water resources, plant condition, soil and energy production using new instrumental techniques.
A generic VA model will be developed for evaluation studies at local (VA demonstrator) and regional scales in the Euro-Mediterranean region.
A database will be developed to support the quantification of environmental impact indicators for AV systems (new LCA methodologies, silo/nexus index).
The environmental impact of AV systems will be assessed through improved LCA and a performance indicator of the water-energy-food nexus at local and regional scales, in the current climate and taking into account its feedbacks on local and regional climate.
The resilience potential of AV systems to extreme hydrological events (heat waves, meteorological and agricultural droughts) will be assessed in current and future climates.
Consortium
The consortium includes 3 laboratories from higher education and research establishments in the social sciences, and 2 laboratories from research organizations.
The project addresses two major new issues: (1) the Agrivoltaic solution as an emerging energy system that has not yet been studied in depth, and (2) a new Life Cycle Assessment approach to take into account the systemic nature of the AV system, its local deployment and its dynamic dimension in a changing climate.rnrnu0026nbsp;

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