EP.6 Bringing Agrivoltaics to the World with Iain Ward of Solar Agricultural Services

Banking on Solar - E.6 - Iain Ward
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It's time for Banking on Solar. This is your host Bart Frischknecht. Solar developers, investors, and lenders risk losing projects when they bog down during financing. Banking on Solar is the podcast community where energy transition project financing stakeholders share lessons learned so that more projects get built.

[00:00:19] Bart: Welcome to Banking on Solar on today's episode. You'll hear from 

[00:00:22] Bart: Iain Ward.

[00:00:24] Bart: Iain Ward is the founder and CEO of Solar Agricultural Services, among many other hats that he wears. He's an experienced farmer with two decades of experience working with farmers as a USDA NRCS technical service provider specializing in conservation planning. He's been featured on NPR, Business Wire, Washington Post, and the New York Times.

[00:00:44] Bart: He's worked extensively with Ocean Spray as part of their cooperative growers representing and, and on the grower council representing Massachusetts grower owners. In addition to owning his first generation cranberry and livestock farm for the past 15 years, Iain has helped farmers with planning, conservation, and diversification across the United States and Canada.

As founder and CEO of his consulting business, Iain leads a dedicated team trusted by both farmers and developers to be the liaison that understands the economic, environmental, and social dynamics of family farms.

[00:01:16] Bart: What you'll hear in our conversation is Iain's passion for bringing those two things together. He truly feels that when family, family farms disappear, the direct connection to our food source goes away. Small towns lose their rural character. Iain's mission is to implement regenerative systems that revitalize farmland, farmers, and food.

[00:01:35] Bart: At the same time, Iain is not one to shy away from the economic realities that it takes resources to achieve not just the energy transition, but the goals that we all have as a community and as a nation to be sustainable. You'll hear Iain's passion for advocating for both farmers and solar energy and how he's brought those two things to life. 

[00:02:03] Bart: Now onto the show.

[00:02:05] Bart: Ian, it's wonderful to be talking to you today. I am super curious about all things agrivoltaics and you are an amazing expert to be talking to. I would love to hear, before you became the person you are today doing all the work you're doing across lots of different areas, some of your journey, you know, what led to you founding solar agricultural services and you know, what your work focuses on today.

[00:02:28] Bart: Let's get there. But you know, how did, how did you get to this spot where you are today?

[00:02:32] Iain Ward: spot? Oh, that's a great question. And it's fun to talk about that evolution because it has been an evolution. I, I used to run around the woods in a loincloth because I just loved being outside and being as, as native as I could be, you know I read books about Native Americans and I, and I, that's what I wanted to do.

[00:02:52] Iain Ward: And what did I want it to be? And my grandmother from Scotland lived with us for 10 years and she would take us out to, for walks. She never had a car. So Go out for walks to the farms nearby, dairy farms. And we watched the cowies, she's Scottish. So we watched the cowies eating in the field. And, and that was back in, they were, there wasn't a lot of confined agriculture.

[00:03:13] Iain Ward: It was the cows were out in the field and they were brought into, to milk. And I remember the feeling that I got when, not that farm, but the farm before it became houses and I was crushed. And yes, people need a place to live. But I, I just remember that that feeling of the, the, the aliveness that became cookie cutter houses, just, it just struck me. 

[00:03:40] Iain Ward: And so the, the combination of wanting to preserve woods and preserve farmland and evolved into me traveling to places like Indonesia, being an exchange student, involved into going to the University of New Hampshire as an environmental science major. And then to Montana to learn how to build log homes, because I was trying to supply a basic need and thinking, how do I, the biggest thing I learned out in Montana was the folks that I worked with there said if you like what you see, they asked me, do you like what you see?

[00:04:08] Iain Ward: I'm like, I love it out here. They're like, we'll go home. Go home and tell your armchair professors to not send more people out here to tell us how to manage our land. And that was the first time that I realized that if you really want to learn a place, and you really want to make a decision about a place, you go to that place, and you become as native as you can become, and then make a decision that's informed with the people that your decision is going to impact. So that kind of translated into a company that I, I started called New England Consulting Services. And we were doing working with the natural resources conservation service as a technical service provider. So I write conservation plans and soil health and water quality, working with producers, farmers to help them implement best management practices and diversify their incomes.

[00:04:56] Iain Ward: The diversification aspect of things was where solar came in because I was helping farmers negotiate their land leases because they didn't really trust some of the solar companies that were coming in and what they're saying, and so I helped them ask questions. And before, you know, it in Massachusetts, there was a smart program and that's the, the name of the program that incentivized solar and farmers.

[00:05:21] Iain Ward: It incentivized agrovoltaics, or growing crops underneath solar panels. And it was a perfect time and place for me to have the advocacy of farmers, the diversification, the trust of farmers. I was a farmer myself because I tried to buy multiple farms and lost out on multiple farms to development. I was trying to reverse the, what I learned as a kid and that loss.

[00:05:45] Iain Ward: And it didn't work. I lost both farms to development. So I ended up buying a cranberry bog. Which is a wetland that you can't put a house on. So, I was able to afford that agricultural land. And that was my, how I got into farming and I'm an ocean spray grower. It's a cooperative. And that I was able to farm upland farm landlocked pieces behind that with pigs and sheep and goats and cows got, so I got my agricultural, my upland agricultural soil fix there.

[00:06:15] Iain Ward: And the commercial crop was cranberries. And the, the, at that time, because. Because the farmers trusted what I was doing and saying, and because the solar developers figured out that, that, that having a farmer representative through the permitting process and through the conversations with towns was advantageous and because I was a farmer, so the UMass knew who we were, we were, and, and the department of ag. I'd written a bunch of grants for other producers, sort of like a, Perfect place to be, to be a catalyst for this new thing. And so solar agricultural services was born mainly because, because we're doing so much work with New England consulting services which was conservation planning. Not all conservation folks, not all folks in general, like solar.

[00:07:02] Iain Ward: So we separated the two companies. So we still have those two companies. One does conservation planning and farm advocacy work. And the other one does agrivoltaics exclusively. We don't do conventional solar. We do help folks with, you know, with recommending for rooftop solar and things like that, but it's really just growing crops underneath solar panels.

[00:07:22] Iain Ward: Can we do it at a distributed generation level? And can we do it at a, at a utility scale level? So that's the background. That's how we got into doing what we do.

[00:07:30] Bart: Yeah, that's awesome. This is a super exciting story. And so many, So many twists and turns along the way, but but put you in the spot where you are right now, being able to advise on, on both of these things. So I just have to imagine that that is a big challenge to you. You are splitting yourselves in many, in many, in many different ways.

[00:07:47] Bart: Right. And so I guess, have you found it hard to keep all those hats on, right? The farmer hat, the, the conservation planning hat, the, the solar consultant development hat on yeah. What, how do you, how do you manage all of those things at the same time?

[00:08:03] Iain Ward: It It's actually quite natural I mean, you think about it. I, so I wake up every morning, and I say to myself, "I am so happy and grateful now that I am tending the regeneration of millions of acres of farmland , the revitalization of thousands of farm families , and the vitality of thousands of beginning farmers across the country and internationally. I say that to myself,

[00:08:28] Bart: that's a great mission.

[00:08:29] Iain Ward: I, that that's my mission. That's that's SolAg's mission. That's doing a consulting services mission. That's, this is what motivates me in the morning to get up, put a smile on my face. And I go out and take massive action to bring that to actuality.

[00:08:45] Iain Ward: So, so it's in the, in a worldview of looking at this as a living system. It all connects.

[00:08:54] Bart: Yeah.

[00:08:55] Iain Ward: If you're looking at trying to, not trying, actually doing, you know, we all eat. That's a common, it doesn't matter what color skin you have, what ailment you have, what political affiliation you have. Without food and water, there's not life.

[00:09:12] Iain Ward: So if you're looking at it as a, as that's your starting point, then, we're all in this together. So if you look at it, not as siloed things, but as a living system that everyone has a specialty of some sort. How do you maximize everyone's actualized intent. I'm going a little spiritual here, but get to the core of the matter, that's what it is.

[00:09:39] Iain Ward: So it's, it's, it's all congruent. And when you start your day like that, and you end your day like that and you act accordingly, it all comes together.

[00:09:48] Bart: That's awesome.. That's great. I understand, do you have like lived experience on your own property now with agrivoltaics or maybe, maybe I didn't hear that right, but my understanding is that you've had some, some lived experience with this now as well.

[00:10:02] Iain Ward: So lived, my property is in a municipally owned electrical company, which, so they don't get any of the incentives. I would love to have solar on my property. I do, I do on my house, you know, I do it's very small scale, but we, because we were at the forefront of the smart program and dual use agrivoltaics in Massachusetts.

[00:10:23] Iain Ward: And because when you talk about financing, because you know, the, the, the, the solar companies were a little bit iffy on this, trying to get buy in from insurance companies that were finance, you know, insurance companies, and then the financiers who were like, Oh, wait a minute, we're used to having electricians that are certified two people at every time with PPE, personal protective equipment on at all times in our array, that's, that's got a chain link fence around it, and everyone else has to stay out.

[00:10:50] Iain Ward: Wait, now you're saying that it's going to have a livestock fence and there's going to be farmers and tractors and multiple people and researchers like, wow, hold, wait a minute. And so there was some cold feet and because where there's a will, there's a way, because we were so passionate about helping to pave the way in this endeavor of agrivoltaics, we, we, became the asset manager of these projects, agricultural asset manager.

[00:11:18] Iain Ward: And, and on five of them across the state, we became the farmer and we've. We've penned agreements that say we're liable. We've got general liability. We had to work with farm family, which is now American national. And we had to get insurance that was naturally offered to farmers. We had to you know, talk with them about what's the difference between operating under any solar panel or operating in a barn with a payloader with a minimum wage person that is, that if they hit the support beam, The barn comes down, the cows die, everyone, you know, like, it's kind of the same.

[00:11:52] Iain Ward: So farming is, is, is, is risky economically, physically. And, and so, you know, farmers are kind of accustomed to these kinds of risks and don't think anything of it. So with proper training, We're like, look, we got trained. We know what not to touch. Let us do what we do. And it's because so that personal experience is we now have three years of experience being the farmer.

[00:12:18] Iain Ward: Now we can farm, but we put into our agreements that we can sub license out that farming activity to one or more farmers. And that's what we're doing. So as far as land access goes, as far as the, you know, the, the, proverbial ESG, environmental social governance boxes that people are looking to check. We did it by default.

[00:12:40] Iain Ward: I didn't even know we were doing it, but we were doing it, you know, environmentally responsible practices, incorporating regenerative practices. So bringing in folks that don't have access to land. Farmers that try to buy a million dollar combine, try to get even a loan as a beginning farmer. If you don't have three years experience, you don't qualify.

[00:13:01] Iain Ward: How do you get the three years of experience?

[00:13:02] Bart: Mm hmm.

[00:13:02] Iain Ward: You got to work basically for not a lot of money to get the experience. Then how do you have the collateral to go in? Which, because they're risk averse and the land institutions like farm credit system and the farm service agency, they require collateral experience.

[00:13:19] Iain Ward: It's, it's not easy as a beginning farmer, I can say. It is not easy to become a farmer unless you're born into it. So how do you provide that land access? Because I've gone through it from my personal experience, we're, we're using energy sector resources, combining with agricultural sector know how and saying agrivoltaics is a perfect combination to allow for that opportunity for beginning farmers, including me.

[00:13:45] Iain Ward: And now. How we can mentor other beginning farmers, provide an opportunity for them to come in, grow crops, actually get paid, have a, have a land lease that they don't have to pay for the land. And they actually get paid because in a lot of instances, most instances, solar developers are paying for vegetation management under a raise. Take that same amount of money that you're paying for a lawnmower,

[00:14:12] Bart: Yeah.

[00:14:13] Iain Ward: pay the farmer to do it. Vegetation could be grass, could be hay, could be corn, could be soy, could be any one of those things. If they're managed, that's your vegetation management. And you've got a person with their eyes and ears, is it increased liability, exposure? Perhaps, but they've got insurance. We've already gone down this path. They've got insurance. We're protected. And in that way, it's a long winded way to answer your simple question. Do I have personal experience? Yes. And now that we've proven out that personal experience, we're broadening that scope and, and looking at helping other States with their policies, helping on their farmers and other States and helping other developers think this through and really incorporate this at a systematic level.

[00:14:57] Bart: Yeah. No, that's fantastic. You've hit on just sharing that personal experience so many of these principles that seem like they're key factors to, to having success, right? Everything from the land access to working with utilities, to working with the, the lenders and the insurance companies. There's so many principles here.

[00:15:17] Bart: One thing we'd like to do with our audience is distill down some of the principles that you're bringing from like a masterclass format. And so if you're thinking about a developer, an investor who's scratching their head and saying, like, I just don't see why we do agrivoltaics or I don't see how this is going to pencil with the way we traditionally do finance.

[00:15:35] Bart: If you could lay out, you know, some key principles, what are needed for a place to be come a successful agrivoltaics project or for some, something like that to get built. I'd love to hear you just from your perspective who's initiating these projects today and then what are some key principles that lead to, to actually getting across the finish line to actually being successful with getting these projects done?

[00:15:59] Iain Ward: to be successful you need the will to do it. That's it. That's as simple as it is. This is a very complex. Nature is complex, right? Mother nature is complex. The more we try to simplify it, the more we become extractive. And the more we have to pay later on, we're just pushing the payment down the line. And if you follow indigenous principles, looking at seventh generation, seven generations from now, we're in a whole bunch of doo doo if we don't do something Different now, right? So when John F. Kennedy asked, I forget his name, the premier scientist at NASA, what it was going to take to get to the moon, he said, the will to do it, Henry Ford, what's going to take to come up with the V8, the will to do it. Stick with it. Be persistent. What population can you think of that has a, has a spiritual connection to a mission that regardless of the economics, the commitment, the dangers, the lack of of vacation, if you want to make that a thing too, than the, than the farming population, the farming pop. The people that are feeding us are doing so not because it makes a ton of economic sense. You hope, you hope that you can do it, but the risks are, are, are immense. You don't know. It's not predictable. So you're part of nature. So harnessing that persistent, consistent passion to get something done and having the faith that the seed that you plant. is going to germinate, having the patience to wait for that germination. When you plant a seed, the corn is not harvested in the next day. It could be 90 day corn, right? When you were conceived, it took nine and a half months for you to become a person. So, People that's foot that there's no flip a switch to be flipped. There's no switch to be flipped This is this is a decision to be we're going to follow this path. We're going to be on the roller coaster ride that is dynamic, that is natural. We're going to work with our people to think for themselves and think naturally. Ask questions. Companies ask questions of your, of your employees. Employees ask questions of the process by which you get to a decision, because there's a process and there's a system. And as a structure, we can change the structure.

[00:18:56] Iain Ward: Solar panels, we can change the solar panels. What is the system within which we're operating? What are the incentives of that? And what's the process by which we make a decision to determine where we are locating these things and what structures we're building on these things? If you're just, you've got a model that works somewhere in Arizona and you plop it down in New England, you know what?

[00:19:14] Iain Ward: It may not work. You take a model in New England and plop it down in Arizona or Ohio or somewhere else. It's, it's may not work going back to the beginning part of our conversation. If you become native, if you actually ask the people that live in a community, do you want to see solar? Almost guaranteed everyone's going to say no, not in my backyard, almost guaranteed. But, if we don't want to cut down trees, we don't want to take out farmland and, and most people say, put it over parking lots and, and on rooftop buildings, but talk with the people that own those buildings.

[00:19:48] Iain Ward: And they're like, not sure we might put a little bit array to offset our own electrical, electrical use. We don't want our sign blocked. And we have some building inspector folks that are selling us that the drainage won't work if we put up these canopies. Where do we put solar? We either do it or we don't do it.

[00:20:05] Iain Ward: And so the lowest hanging fruit, while we're debating on this, our federal government, whether you agree with it or not, is saying we want to be carbon neutral and solar is a thing. So it's going in. And so all we're saying is to solar companies and to farmers like, Hey, if this, we can agree that we may not like it, but if it's going to happen, can we do it in a particular way? That is more conducive to the land, more conducive to the farmer, and produces electrons. So, land first, farmer second, solar third. Solar kind of helps the rest of it work,

[00:20:37] Bart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:20:39] Iain Ward: that perspective, it's okay.

[00:20:40] Bart: Right. Right. Right. And that's one of the things I guess I want to circle back to part of this conversation because I hear your message loud and clear that just because it's hard doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, and just because it feels a little harder than maybe a cookie cutter way we've done things that also doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do or worth it.

[00:20:58] Bart: But you said something earlier, which was, you know, one of the benefits you see coming out of this is land access for new farmers or keeping farmers on their land. And there's a real synergy with the resources from the project development community and the know how of the people that are already on the land and getting those two to come together.

[00:21:18] Bart: That. That feels like where the magic is, right? Because if you have developers that are not committed to that mission, they still need to have a proforma that says, well, I can, I can, I can get this signed off on, or they may be very patient. I think that's one thing that's interesting about, about energy development professionals is they know this is a long term asset.

[00:21:36] Bart: They know not long term, like seven generations, but. In the development community, if you're thinking about 20 to 50 years of this asset producing that's, that's a, that's an incredibly long timeframe compared to, you know, corporate quarter by quarter looking. So I think there's, it feels like there's some overlap there in terms of incentives aligned around something being valuable over a long term.

[00:21:56] Bart: But I also, but I also don't feel like the average developer that shows up is going to be on the same page as the farmer and. So I'm curious about that aspect, right? To get those access to those resources that can make agriculture, make a lot more sense you need that kind of outside injection of capital injection of resources, injection of, of project excitement.

[00:22:17] Bart: Yeah, what happens there, you know, when those investors and those developers get turned on to Agrivoltaics? What do you see happen, changing their mindset or changing how they approach it so they can justify it or, or even lean into it from their investment thesis?

[00:22:31] Iain Ward: There's current, there's, you're asked, that's why there's two ways to answer that question.

[00:22:35] Iain Ward: There's what's happening today. And there's what I see for the future, not too distant future. There's today, agrivoltaics people on this podcast may not even know what the word means. It's not currently. A thing. The U S department of agriculture is considering it. That there's a word called agrivoltaics in a bill that's on the Senate floor.

[00:23:00] Iain Ward: That could be part of the farm bill. We're hoping that it is part of the farm bill. We won't know for another while. That would legitimize this from a perspective of okay, the USDA recognizes that agrivoltaics is legit. Great. In the meantime, whenever we've got to, we've got to figure out this, this, this is the sweet spot.

[00:23:20] Iain Ward: This is, this is human relations 101, right? I have a desire to put solar on the property. And it's proximal. What's driving that is proximal to a substation. It's proximal to electrical lines. That's how you get financed because your costs are not too high. Where's the land that's closest to that? The long fruit the past 10 years is kind of gone.

[00:23:42] Iain Ward: Those that were willing to sell out or those that were closest to are gone. It's the people that said over my dead body, you're going to put solar in my land. My grandfather grew over his grave, like no way. Those are the people that are now left closest to that substation in a lot of cases. Or there's a bunch of trees that people don't want cut down.

[00:23:58] Iain Ward: So you go to the open space, which is the farm. If you go to that farmer and say, we have the best thing since sliced bread. We're going to pay you a bunch of money. Maybe they say yes, most instances I'd say, they'd say, no, get off my land. If you start talking with them about what is your spiritual connection?

[00:24:20] Iain Ward: What is your connection to this land? How do we honor that? How do we innovate? Do you have another generation coming behind you? What does it, are they on the, cause here's a pain point, right? This is the thing that we are, the median age of farmers in the country across the country is 60 plus. The next generation doesn't have a ton of interest.

[00:24:41] Iain Ward: There are some that are very passionate. Out of three kids, there may be one. There may be none. They may be having a tenant farmer farm their land. One of the pain points is I'm a fourth generation farmer and I don't have another generation to take over because I ran them off my farm because they weren't going to make enough money, and I don't want them to go through what I had to go through.

[00:25:03] Iain Ward: It's a very visceral thing. If you understand the psychological, the psychology behind the stewardship of that, of that farm, and you ask questions and you ask them to talk about what really means something to them. And you take that, that, that insight and you say, Hey, we have some resources. We could donate a million dollars to the school system.

[00:25:23] Iain Ward: Because this is like the playbook, right? Donate to the playground, the school system, whatever that gets the community, enough community support to get a project done. This is like what people do. All right. If we're throwing around money, throwing around resources, can we actually do something that helps that farmer and helps the community in a way that is a little bit different?

[00:25:44] Iain Ward: Steve Jobs said, think different. He didn't say think differently. He said, think different. So I propose not thinking regeneratively, but think regenerative. Regenerative is a dynamic reinvention of yourself and continual, continuous. So you ask that farmer, how do you see yourself in 10 years? How do you get another generation back engaged?

[00:26:07] Iain Ward: Would an infusion of capital that allows you to still operate the farm? You're probably going to have to change. Maybe your 60 foot boom, It's not going to fit anymore down, down panel. Are you open to using drones? Are you open to using precision technology, autonomously driven vehicles? If you've got 22 feet, 32 feet, 40 feet between panels, what would you do?

[00:26:32] Iain Ward: How would you think about operating this farm? Would you grow the same crops? Would you innovate in some way? Chances are pretty good. The first time through, they're going to say, nope, no, how, no way. The second conversation, because the solar developer is persistent and they're asking questions, and they go back and think about it, and they think like a farmer again, and that farmer's thinking about it too.

[00:26:52] Iain Ward: The second time the conversation is like, well, I really don't think it's going to work, but if it did, here's an idea. Third conversation, the farmer is like thinking about it. They're now thinking, I, you know, that Yankee ingenuity, that spirit of creation is coming through. It could work if you did it this way.

[00:27:16] Iain Ward: And that solar developer who's observant goes back to management and says, you know what? This could work. If we provided a well, we provided livestock fencing, we provided a shelter, if we provided enough distance between the last post and the fence, if we pushed our fence back enough, if we made our access roads wide enough that we could get, you know, equipment to load. If we created an income that was five to 10 year leases, the landowner now that farmers, the landowner doesn't have to be the farmer. They can just be the landowner and they can retire. They can farm in the short term. They could mentor Mr. And Mrs. Farmer. Who in the community do you know of that's a young op shot that you would love to help? Let's talk with them. They bring them in. Now, now we start to build a little sense of community. Now those developers, if they're smart are listening to those farmers and they're engaging those farmers. Those farmers are helping them get through permitting. They're helping to, to align the community needs with what the solar developer really wants to do, which is build a project and it comes to financing and, you know, so maybe they don't give us a million dollars to school.

[00:28:32] Iain Ward: Maybe it's 500, 000, another 500, 000 put back in the project. Most, and I would, I would implore any of the folks on here that are, that are listening on financing. I know I donate what I can donate. In my time and in resources, Bart, you probably do too. I bet a lot of people do because that's, you feel good.

[00:28:51] Iain Ward: You want to share, you give back. If you ask the people that are financing these projects, who are probably donating income from the profits of these projects to something else. If you said, Hey, you know what? That 8 percent guaranteed return over 20 years that you're expecting, we're going to make it six. But here's what you're getting for that. We're basically spending your money. You're making less profit, but we're spending it on environmental stewardship with pollinator habitats around these arrays and directly underneath the rows, I'm, I'm painting a picture here

[00:29:27] Bart: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:29] Iain Ward: We're, we're, we're, we've got social aspects of this beginning farmers, limited resources, farm, limited resource farmers that couldn't otherwise afford to get onto land are getting onto the land.

[00:29:42] Iain Ward: They've got long term leases that they can use to provide the collateral and in part to the farm credit system or the farm service agency system. We've got governance. We've got community engagement supports. We're feeding people with food, fuel, yes, fuel is a part of this equation, both electrons or corn for ethanol.

[00:30:07] Iain Ward: But how about food that you can digest as a human without going through being processed? That's a part of this too. So feeding people, creating more nourishment in the food that we're gathering, because we're incorporating regenerative agricultural practices. Doesn't have to be organic, but I'm just thinking, this is a picture.

[00:30:26] Iain Ward: Now, are they willing to earn less because we're providing them a way that they can, and it, could there be a way that they would have earned and can we, in a financial way, almost, obtain the tax write off because we're doing this upfront in the ESG, and we provide that model. There's a whole bunch of things that come off of this if we just think about the opportunity that agrivoltaics provides and bringing these two sectors together.

[00:30:56] Bart: That's great. And I'm really excited to see as time goes on, right? How the thinking bends more that way. And we bring in the financial piece in a traditional sense, but also this creative financing in terms of how do you actually make this project work because you're recognizing all of the, all of the aspects that are at play there.

[00:31:16] Bart: This has been an amazing conversation. I would love, I have so many more questions. So in the interest of time, I'd love to switch to more of a lightning round format and, and ask you a few questions as we wrap up here and just whatever comes, you know, top of mind in, in 30 seconds or less rapid fire style.

[00:31:31] Bart: Where are Where are the hotspots for agrivoltaics right now in the United States geographically? Where, where, where, where have we been historically? And what are some places that you're excited about really dipping their toes in the water at this point?

[00:31:43] Iain Ward: There are research projects across the country, small scale the natural The National NREL, National Renewable Energy Lab has, has pilot projects across the country. The first agrivoltaic project that, that I would highlight is Jack's Solar Garden. Byron has a fantastic operation there. He's really proving what you can do under arrays.

[00:32:05] Iain Ward: He does own it, so he's able to decide what happens from

[00:32:09] Bart: Yeah, and that's, that's outside Fort Collins, Colorado. Is that right? 

[00:32:12] Bart: Okay.

[00:32:13] Iain Ward: Longmont. And then from a, from a, a state perspective, Massachusetts was the first state in the nation that had an incentive for this. So there's, there's a nest of projects that are there. There are certain parameters that you have to meet.

[00:32:23] Iain Ward: New Jersey is the second state in the nation likely to have some sort of the, the, the BPU is going to have some sort of incentive based incentive. Agrivoltaic projects there. New York is not far behind and places like Ohio, where I'm located right now, and Illinois and Michigan, a lot of states are thinking about how to do this, thinking about using Massachusetts as a model, maybe not something to be replicated, but at least a touch point.

[00:32:48] Bart: Yeah, cool. That's awesome. So for those that are, this is maybe their first conversation they've ever heard about agrivoltaics. I would love for you to just really quickly, if we had an infographic, we'd show it. But what are the levels of agrivoltaics that are possible, right? You've mentioned some of those things in passing, but if you could kind of list out that the implementations you've seen right from pollinator habitat to, to grazing, to, to food crops.

[00:33:10] Bart: How, how would you describe that evolution or that, that plethora of opportunities there are to, to, to be part of this movement?

[00:33:18] Iain Ward: Sure. I mean, I think from an ecological services perspective pollinator habitat is like the bare minimum, right? That's, that's the, I wouldn't even consider that agrivoltaics because arguably, yes, you get honey, but you know, other than that, you're not harvesting a food crop.

[00:33:32] Iain Ward: So I would say that pollinator habitats, ecological services, agrivoltaics really starts with grazing of sheep would be the lowest hanging fruit. Replacing lawn mowers with sheep grazers. And then that would be producing of vegetables after that. And producing of integrating livestock into that higher livestock.

[00:33:51] Iain Ward: So cows, raising panels up so that, or, or, or making them tabletops that cows should graze underneath. And then the, I think the next. The, the, the, the highest form would be the incorporation of all of the above. So you've got vegetables, you've got commodity crops. You rotate them, you bring in animals, animals can fertilize.

[00:34:10] Iain Ward: And that's truly a living system, regenerative regeneratively grown, operated single array, with pollinator habitat on the outside,

[00:34:19] Bart: Right, right, right. Yeah, no, no, no, exactly. Exactly. Cool. What what feels like the biggest bottleneck slowing things down today?

[00:34:28] Iain Ward: Our ability to create. That's it. Thinking creatively is the bottleneck. If we are aligned with that thinking creatively. Is, is rewarded. Agrivoltaics is off to the races. Greenwashing can be a thing. So how do we not have this be something that's just like, Oh, agrivoltaics. So it's going to label it this and keep it business as usual. We've got to create together and create and honor, the systems within which we're in. So thinking locally. Acting globally is truly a thing, right? So think thinking globally, acting locally, if we become native to these places, it does take a little bit of time. That's the biggest bottleneck is understanding.

[00:35:19] Iain Ward: Our audience, where we are, and then actually following through on it with the people that are in the decision place, because right now, the legacy projects are still making money. There'd be the projects that were permitted three years ago are being constructed today. The EPC contractors that are constructing projects today also need to create and change.

[00:35:40] Iain Ward: So the biggest bottleneck is in the incorporation, the understanding that we have an end use that wants to have vegetation. Not kill it all.

[00:35:50] Bart: Right. Not pave it or put rocks under it or, or plant grass that gets mowed. Yeah.

[00:35:56] Iain Ward: So if I'm going to be very succinct, I think, and as I'm thinking it through, thank you for this lightning round question. I think the biggest bottleneck is in the communication of the end use being viable agricultural production, forage production, that we've got to work. You can talk a blue streak at the beginning, but if you don't deliver, if during construction, the electric contractor did not get the memo and they drive over everything and they, and they, and they compact the soils and they put the combiner boxes in the middle of a row and they don't bury the cab.

[00:36:29] Iain Ward: And it's above ground and you can't drive through the row, like this, this engineers, the asset managers, the EPC contractors, the asset manager, long term for access all have to be on the same page that this is going to be farmed and that we have a long 30 year lifespan to go. So let's not mess it up.

[00:36:49] Bart: Yeah. Very cool. All right. You shared a little bit about what gets you up in the morning at the, at the start of our conversation and what gets you excited. At the end of the day and you're reflecting back, what does a successful day look like for you? It could be work or non work related.

[00:37:05] Iain Ward: It's all the same for me. It's have I left every person or interaction with a feeling of increase?

[00:37:15] Bart: That's great. Well, Ian, this has been amazing. And I'm even more excited about agrivoltaics than I was at the start of our conversation. So yeah, people, I'm sure will have questions. How, how do you, would you like people to reach out to you?

[00:37:30] Iain Ward: You know, we, we have a website. We're not on social media, I guess we should be, but we're just getting stuff done, working behind the scenes. As we become more high profile, I suppose I'll have to have someone do social media stuff. But basically we have support@solaragservices.com would get to me.

[00:37:50] Iain Ward: I used to give out my email address and phone number. I only have one and my cell phone. So I

[00:37:57] Bart: It got crazy.

[00:37:58] Iain Ward: I have work. It got a little crazy. So now we, we send everyone to support@solaragservices.com. And it'll get to me and happy to talk through things because I love this so much and because I'm so passionate about the, the, the places this could go and delivering today.

[00:38:18] Iain Ward: It's not just theory. We're actually doing what I'm talking about doing and implementing it. And that's the most exciting part because of that you know, my, my, my team is like, Hey, 10 minutes, you can talk for 10 minutes, not two hours, you know, so that's, that's my long winded way of saying, please reach out, love talking about this and, you know, let's be constructive.

[00:38:39] Iain Ward: If I can talk while I'm on the tractor or what have you, that's, that's what we'll do.

[00:38:42] Bart: Very cool. Yeah. That's great. Maybe, maybe the next time we have you back on the podcast, it'll be from a tractor. That would, that would be fantastic.

[00:38:50] Iain Ward: Awesome.

[00:38:51] Bart: Awesome. Well, Ian, thank you very much. And we'll, we'll wrap it up there. 

[00:38:55] Bart: For all of you banking on solar listeners, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform so that others can find the show and we can get more people banking on solar.

[00:39:05] Bart: If you have an interesting guest idea or something you'd like to hear on the podcast, please let me know. Drop a note at bart@bankingonsolar.media. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Now is the time for banking on solar. There is money to be made in the planet to save until next time, this is Bart Frischknecht and this is Banking on Solar.