Agrivoltaics is a symbiotic system that overall provides fifteen potential services summarized in Figure 1. Of the fifteen benefits of agrivoltaics, the first two are easy to understand as PV systems generate renewable electricity and this electricity offsets fossil fuel electricity production that in turn decreases greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [34]. The reduced GHG emissions thus help alleviate global climate change and the concomitant adverse effects on the environment and the economy [35]. In addition, a common misperception is that shaded crops from solar panels would reduce crop productivity, but less clearly intuitively, there are now many studies that show agrivoltaics increases crop yield for a wide variety of crops [36,37], while if shading is too much they can decrease [38]. For example, crop yield increased for peppers in the U.S. [39]. Investigations in Japan revealed augmented production of sweet corn in agrivoltaics applications [40]. There is even evidence of enhanced output of grain crops when farmed with solar PV systems [41]. Land-use efficiency increases when PV-generated electricity is added to crop production for a farm, particularly when crop yields increase [41]. This nonintuitive result is possible because agrivoltaics arrays create microclimates beneath the PV modules that alter air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, and soil moisture [42].

This microclimate can be beneficial to crops because the PV protects crops from excess solar energy and inclement weather such as hail or high winds, while also improving PV performance because of lower operating temperatures created by the crops underneath the panels [29,39,43]. Remarkably, a study by Mow et al., showed that agrivoltaics has the potential to increase global land productivity by 35–73% [44]. PV systems designed specifically to be agrivoltaics also minimize agricultural displacement for energy [33,44,45]. In addition to the benefits for the PV array and the crops, agrivoltaics also can benefit water systems as it enables more efficient use of water for farming and thus provides water conservation [46,47,48,49]. PV can also be used to power drip irrigation [50] and vertical growing [51], which uses a fraction of the water of field-based crops. Unlike conventional solar farms that eliminate agricultural employment when they are installed on agricultural land, taking it out of production, agrivoltaics maintains agricultural employment and the farmers provide local food along with all the benefits of reducing food miles and providing fresh food [52,53,54]. Fresh food has health benefits, but agrivoltaics, because it can offset fossil fuel pollution that is also linked to health problems [55], and also can improve human health and even prevent premature deaths [56]. Thus, agrivoltaics provides two mechanisms to benefit human health. Reduction in pollution is primarily attributed to (Scope 1) minimizing emissions related to products produced remotely and brought onto farms for crop production purposes (i.e., fuel, electricity, and fertilizers), (Scope 2) minimizing emissions generated during farming operations, particularly if electric vehicles (EV) and processing are used, and (Scope 3) minimizing emissions related to transportation of produce from farmland (again being used for EVs). In addition, both the increased solar energy production and the increased land-use efficiency have an economic value and thus increase the revenue for a given acre [57]. In addition, because PV is a capital asset that generates value that increases with inflation, it can be used as an inflation hedge during times of high inflation (e.g., 2021 and 2022) [58]. Lastly, agrivoltaics has the potential to be used for on-farm production of nitrogen fertilizer [59], renewable fuels such as anhydrous ammonia [60] or hydrogen [61,62,63], or for electricity for EV charging for on- or off-farm use.

Agrivoltaics is available at all scales. Normally, agrivoltaics is deployed at large scales, but even for the home gardener, parametric open-source cold-frame agrivoltaic systems (POSCAS) have been developed [64]. Agrivoltaics also works with different levels of shade tolerant crops. Full array density PV modules are beneficial for shade tolerant crops, while half or three-fourth array density PV is beneficial for shade intolerant crops [64]. Considering crop performance, east-west-facing vertical bifacial solar panels can be the preferred fixed tilting scheme to be employed for agrivoltaics applications [65]. For bifacial PV modules installed in agrivoltaics applications, increased irradiance and bifacial gain is observed by elevating the height of PV arrays [66]. This also results in convenience of operation for conventional agricultural machinery. Moreover, increasing row spacing reduces electrical output per unit area, though, this increased ground irradiation as compared to closer spacing that has a higher shading percent of the ground [66]. South-facing topologies are conducive for cultivation during summer for farming shade-tolerant crops, whereas east-west vertical arrays are beneficial during non-summer seasons, and hence, advantageous for permanent crops (e.g., species that are harvested over many seasons, such as grapes) [66].

Agrivoltaics has been demonstrated in Canada such as in the Arnprio tri-part agrivoltaics that consists of a monarch butterfly conservation subproject, a bee and honey production subproject, and a solar grazing and natural weed cutting subproject [67]. Currently, most Canadian agrivoltaics systems are made up of conventional solar PV farms that are also used for grazing sheep. This does have positive benefits for both the sheep (i.e., both thermal protection [68] and more importantly, higher-quality grazing areas [69]), but also the PV systems (i.e., reduced costs for weed abatement) and when combined, the global environment [70]. These uses are considered agrivoltaics, but they are not the highest value benefits seen in Figure 1, nor are they the greatest land-use efficiency strategy. Unfortunately, Canada is lagging Europe, Asia, and the U.S. in agrivoltaics. Other countries that make more aggressive use of agrivoltaics would be expected to generate more revenue per acre and win in competitive markets. As the fifth-largest agricultural exporter in the world [71], Canada has considerable revenue at stake to maintain the state-of-the-art in agricultural technology.

Land use policies and legislation have traditionally been a deterrent to wide-scale PV deployment due to the worries of potential adverse impacts on agricultural yield due to the addition of PV [17,18]. Some studies have been clearer in warning that PV development could directly hurt the food supply by replacing arable land with industrial PV and no food production [21,72]. As Canada in general, and Alberta in particular, is already at a strategic disadvantage in the agricultural space without the use of agrivoltaics compared to other nations that are using it, this study reviews both the current policies and the policy changes necessary to capitalize on the benefits of using agrivoltaics in Alberta.