Here’s the release from the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance:
PAONIA, CO. (April 20, 2023) – Today the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance was named by the National Community Solar Partnership (NCSP) as a recipient of a Community Power Accelerator Phase 1 prize to study and advance community-owned farm-based renewable projects in the North Fork Valley.
The Community Power Accelerator Prize is a U.S. Department of Energy led initiative to spur development of community-owned solar and renewable projects. The North Fork award is for a collaboration that involves the CO Farm & Food Alliance and other organizations, community leaders and businesses. In March this group submitted a proposal to help plan a small solar project that will benefit area farms and farm-related businesses and to use that project as a springboard for additional renewable energy to benefit rural communities. Phase 1 prize recipients can compete for additional awards.
“Our goal is to promote rural climate leadership and to show that the clean energy transition can support agriculture, boost local enterprise, and work toward greater energy equity,” said Pete Kolbenschlag, director of the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance. “We are extremely excited to move our project forward, and we see it as a model for rural climate action that puts land health, people and local community first.”
The North Fork team first coalesced around a small agrivoltaic project being scoped near Hotchkiss, and saw this as an opportunity to consider how the area might advance more community-owned renewables that integrate with agriculture and serve local residents.
“We see agrivoltaics as part of our effort to pursue sustainability, adding renewable energy to our efforts to improve the health of our land and soil and to better feed our local community,” said Mark Waltermire, owner of Thistle Whistle Farm in Hotchkiss, Colorado. “This project will give a handful of farms like this one, and a few food-related businesses that use our produce, a way of accessessing cleaner power, while benefiting our farm by giving us more gentle growing conditions under the panels to grow some of our crops. Our whole farm community benefits. And, we can set the stage for similar projects in areas around the valley that can help other producers,” he added.
Agrivoltaics is an emerging field of solar development that is paired with agriculture. In the U.S. Southwest, as we head into a warmer and drier future, interest in agrivoltaics, as a means to adapt farming to a changing climate while co-locating clean energy production, is high. Some studies show that growing certain crops under solar panels can provide shade benefits, help regulate soil-moisture, and can also help to cool the panels, which increases their efficiency.
The projects being considered by the North Fork team will involve working agriculture, grid energy production, and scientific research conducted in partnership with the Colorado State University Western Colorado Research Center at Rogers Mesa, to gather more data on how renewable energy and agriculture can co-exist and can even benefit each other.
“Innovative solar projects involving agrivoltaics and community ownership models promise significant benefits for rural agricultural communities and there isn’t a better place than the Western Slope to demonstrate that potential and to provide a model that can be replicated,” said team-member Alex Jahp, who works at Paonia-based Solar Energy International. “Receiving the Community Power Accelerator Prize demonstrates that we aren’t alone in our thinking.”
The North Fork Valley is named after a major stem of the Gunnison River, which is the second largest tributary to the imperiled Colorado River system. The region is at the epicenter of the global climate emergency, as a critical headwaters area and due to its heating at a more rapid rate than many places in the nation. The North Fork Valley is home to both the state’s largest operating coal-mine and its highest concentration of organic farms. Many in the region still see both agriculture and energy as key parts of a diverse economic future, but also see the critical need to act to address climate change.
“With Delta County warming double the national and global average, the impacts of local warming are upon us. Building community resilience–through community-driven projects like the ones being considered here, at the nexus of agriculture, water, and energy–is critical if we are to survive and thrive” said Natasha Léger, Executive Director, Citizens for a Healthy Community. She added that “farms play a critical role in transitioning away from oil and gas as energy sources for running farm operations, and will be leadership models for new approaches to land use.”
Citizens for a Healthy Community has recently completed a Climate Action Plan for Delta County, hoping to help local governments act more boldly to address the climate crisis. In its recent report, Gunnison Basin: Ground Zero in the Climate Emergency, the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance also made a pitch for the potency of rural-based climate action – including the expansion of farm-based renewables. The North Fork Valley agrivoltaic team is not waiting to act.
“The Community Power Accelerator Prize is a key award that will allow us to take the great work already being done by local community groups and turn it into tangible results,” said Kolbenschlag on behalf of the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance which accepted the prize for the community collaboration. “We have an exceptional team and an exceptional project. We think this can be a model for rural climate action and community resilience. We thank the Department of Energy and Solar Partnership for this opportunity to prove it.”
