The Role of Agriculture for the European Energy Requests: Agrivoltaic Systems

In 2015, 193 ONU countries members have signed Agenda 2030, a program which contains 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), underlining the need to do urgent actions to mitigate climate change and to achieve the goal to access affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy access. In the same context, European Commission in July 2023 adopted the European Green Deal (EGD) that concern the sustainable use of natural resources to strengthen the resilience of European food systems and agriculture. In 2021, consumption of solid fossil fuels in the EU increased by 15.7% compared with 2020 and is of great importance to focus us in renewable energies (RE) to replace fossil fuels. The conflict between land use for agriculture and energy production has been exceeded by the co-production of agrivoltaic systems (AVS). The use of Photovoltaics (PV) and agriculture in the same area is considered to be multifunctional and thanks to European policies and subsidies, PV has spread in the last years, improving the yields of crops under the solar panels and the electricity generation. AVS can provide a cash flow, minimizing the expenses by using the electricity generated on their farms. Furthermore, the integration of PV in the roof of greenhouses allows to produce energy and heat in a sustainable way, increasing the energy independence in green buildings. For food production, the combination of solar, wind energy in the greenhouses with the cultivation of soilless culture, i.e. hydroponics and aeroponics, can produce food with higher yield than in open field and save water, land, pesticides use in agriculture, reducing environmental impact. This paper will focus on the possibility for Agrivoltaic systems, solar greenhouse and indoor cultivation to produce energy and in meanwhile food in high quantity to sustain energy communities and food demand.