December 11, 2020
Jill Fitzsimmons
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technology Office announced recently that a team led by extension professor Dwayne Breger at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been selected for a three-year, $1.8 million award to study the effects of co-locating solar energy panels and agriculture operations at up to eight different farms across the Commonwealth.
The work will be in partnership with landowners, state agencies, solar developers, and a non-profit farmland organization. As part of the team, Jill Fitzsimmons, assistant research professor of resource economics, will measure changes in economic welfare from dual-use solar to answer such questions as costs and benefits to society from dual-use solar, and whatpolicymakers and solar developers need to be thinking about when they consider the true costs of implementing dual use.