Nicolas Etchelecu is set to inherit his parents' strawberry farm in the Languedoc region, but the business he will run looks very different from a traditional horticultural operation. In 2022 the family erected a 3,000‑square‑metre greenhouse whose roof is made of smart solar panels, the first such structure in France.

The panels are fitted with sensors that detect excess sunlight and automatically lower a shading system to protect the berries from heat stress. When conditions are favourable, the shades open and the panels generate electricity. The dual function is described as "agrivoltaics", a term that is gaining traction among European farmers seeking to hedge against climate‑driven yield losses.

How the technology works on the ground

The French greenhouse uses panels that can tilt to provide shade or expose the crops, depending on real‑time weather data. This flexibility proved valuable during the extreme heatwave that swept France in the summer of 2023, when temperatures regularly exceeded 40 °C. While the panels cut the amount of direct sunlight reaching the strawberries, they also supplied clean power to the farm's electricity needs and fed surplus energy into the grid.

Etchelecu acknowledges a trade‑off: "We observe a decrease in production, about 20 % compared to traditional plastic greenhouses, due to the opacity of the solar panels." Yet he adds that the revenue from electricity sales offsets the loss, allowing the family to adopt a modern structure without shouldering the full upfront cost.

European uptake and variations

Agrivoltaics is no longer a French curiosity. An organic farm in Switzerland has installed panels over a raspberry field, a German grower has placed them above apple trees, and Austrian producers are pairing large‑scale solar arrays with potato and chickpea cultivation. These projects demonstrate that the concept can be adapted to a range of crops and farming practices.

One technical limitation of conventional, horizontally‑mounted panels is that they block the space needed for tractors and other machinery, restricting their use to hand‑picked or low‑mechanisation crops. In Vienna, the municipal utility Wien Energie is trialling bifacial vertical panels that stand like a fence, with solar cells on both sides. The design leaves a clear lane for equipment to pass, while the panels capture sunlight from the morning and late‑afternoon angles, generating power when market prices are higher.

Potential scale and climate resilience

Researchers estimate that agrivoltaic installations across Europe could produce up to 51 terawatts of electricity, roughly twenty‑five times the continent's current electricity consumption. Czech agrivoltaics specialist Jiří Bím told The Guardian that "the potential of this technology is almost unlimited".

Beyond the electricity boost, the shade provided by solar arrays can mitigate the impact of heatwaves and droughts, which have already inflicted severe losses. The June 2023 heatwave alone destroyed an estimated nine million tonnes of grain across Europe, costing around €2 billion in revenue.

Studies by the Warsaw University of Life Sciences and Mendel University in Brno found no significant health or quality risks to soil or crops from the presence of solar panels, reinforcing the case for wider adoption.

Barriers to wider adoption

Despite the technical promise, uptake remains modest. Bím points to a lack of awareness among farmers and the slow process of connecting new installations to national grids as primary obstacles. Legal frameworks add another layer of complexity: in several EU states, income earned from selling solar electricity can interfere with eligibility for agricultural subsidies, discouraging farmers from investing.

Nevertheless, the land footprint required for large‑scale agrivoltaics is relatively small. Bím notes that achieving Czechia's target of 10 GW of solar capacity by 2030 would need only 0.125 % of the country's agricultural land if all new capacity were installed as agrivoltaic systems. Similar calculations for other member states suggest that the proportion of land required would remain marginal.

Looking beyond Europe

The world's largest agrivoltaic project is not in Europe but in China, where a 20‑square‑kilometre solar farm covers goji‑berry fields on the edge of the Gobi Desert. The scale of that installation underscores how quickly the technology can be rolled out when policy, finance and land‑use planning align.

For European policymakers, the challenge is to create a supportive regulatory environment that allows farmers to benefit from renewable energy without jeopardising existing subsidy schemes. The European Commission's Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy both call for increased sustainability in agriculture, and agrivoltaics could help meet those objectives while delivering additional clean‑energy capacity.

As the climate crisis intensifies, the ability to generate electricity on the same land that produces food may become a vital tool for preserving rural livelihoods. For the Etchelecu family, the experiment is already paying off: the strawberries may be a little smaller in volume, but the farm now enjoys a diversified income stream and a lower carbon footprint.

When you next drive past a field dotted with solar panels, look closely, there may be strawberries, apples or potatoes thriving beneath the shade. The sight signals a shift towards a more resilient, multi‑purpose agricultural model that could reshape Europe's countryside in the decades to come.