, Columnist
No, Solar Panels Won’t Leave You Starving
The fears outweigh the genuine risks to agriculture — and attempts to control where rollouts happen may end up being net negative for farmers.
Workers use a tractor to plant seeds in a field where various crops are tested as part of a dynamic agrivoltaic project in France.
Photographer: Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images
At nearly every turn, the pace of the solar rollout has been greatly underestimated.
The chart below shows it best. While forecasts have stuck to sober projections of linear growth, the reality has been an exponential curve as costs have plummeted. In 2023, solar panels provided 6% of the world’s electricity, and BloombergNEF expects another 585 gigawatts of new solar capacity to be installed throughout 2024.