GLASS

Summary:

Agrivoltaic (APV) concept has positioned as the ideal strategy to reduce the land-use conflict between agriculture and photovoltaic (PV) energy, promoting clean energy production and reducing greenhouse gas emissions while guarantying food security. Furthermore, the integration of PVs in agriculture has proved to produce several benefits that may increase agriculture resilience, such as temperature and evapotranspiration reduction, soil humidity improvement or sunburn protection, that could enlarge agriculture production, especially under hot and dry climatic conditions. Additionally, the energy produced could be used for self-consumption in agriculture for irrigation or heating/cooling systems, increasing the added value of the PV system and reducing the CO2 footprint of agriculture.

GLASS aims to demonstrate the potential of agrivoltaics, increasing greenhouse crop production, reducing agricultural inputs and producing clean energy, under hot and dry climatic conditions. With this aim, the project will develop a cost-effective PV greenhouse living-lab in the south of Spain, and experimentally investigate the synergies, environmental impact and economic viability of agrivoltaics. GLASS will adopt a multidisciplinary approach, bringing together experts from PV energy, agriculture, environment, business and economy, in order to build the required capacity to achieve the scientific goals of the project. A multi-actor approach has also been considered, thus the project will involve partners coming from academia and industry with the aim to guarantee the transfer of knowledge to the society and expand the project impact. GLASS will implement a strong dissemination and exploitation plan, including a market deployment plan for the PV greenhouse, aiming at engage potential stakeholders of APV systems and civil society in the future development of the technology in Spain.

The project is well aligned with the main international environmental objectives, such as the Sustainable Development Goals from the United Nations (specially 2, 7 and 9), the EU Green Deal, the farm to fork strategy and the European Framework for research and innovation, Horizon Europe. At national scale, GLASS will help to reach the energy goals of the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plans and carry out the National Recovery Plan, promoting the transfer of knowledge from academia to industry and the creation of high quality jobs. At the same time, the project is in strong agreement with the Do Not Significant Harm(DNSH) principle, promoting the expansions of renewable energies in coexistence with agriculture, improving resource-use efficiency and preserving biodiversity.

Overall, the project GLASS will contribute to achieve the International Energy and Climate goals while ensuring food security, enhancing the expansion of agrivoltaics through the development of a novel PV Greenhouse Living-Lab in the south of Spain and the demonstration of its techno-economic and social viability.