Solar panels, beehives, and grazing sheep occupy Mark Owerko’s 480-acre farm in southern Alberta. But under the province’s current renewable-energy rules, comparable projects are nearly impossible, according to reporting attributed to the Calgary Herald. Measures meant to safeguard farmland and scenery can prevent solar developments even when agriculture continues on the same land.
A transmission line near Owerko’s land put him in a prime area to establish a solar farm. Owerko owns and runs the farm, which took eight years to become a site combining a solar plant, an apiary, and sheep farming. The property demonstrates that these uses can coexist, without proving that every solar proposal would produce equivalent results.
A study in Environmental Research Letters provides evidence for the benefits of this arrangement. According to the study, allowing just two sheep per hectare to graze the grasses around photovoltaic installations improves the abundance of bees and beneficial beetles by 38 percent. Most of the increase, though not all of it, came from an 83 percent increase in adjacent honey bee populations compared with solar farms mowed by hand.
How operators maintain the ground around solar panels, rather than the presence of panels alone, is the issue addressed by that finding. Beneficial insects responded differently to grazing and mowing. Lead author Leana Zoller told the Cornell Chronicle, “sheep grazing and beneficial insect habitat are two prominent conversation topics around solar development right now.”
That prospect of using land for two purposes runs up against Alberta’s restrictive rules around renewable energy on agricultural land, which are meant to preserve “pristine viewscapes.” A growing body of research indicates that solar farms are a net positive for many reasons, beyond producing electricity. Owerko’s operating farm puts that argument into practice.
Owerko says his development received approval shortly before Alberta introduced a seven-month moratorium on new wind and solar development, making it one of the last projects approved before the pause. In his view, the moratorium hurt conditions for investment.
“The moratorium drove power pricing into a ditch,” Owerko told the Calgary Herald. “In doing that, they chased away investment.”
For Jorden Dy, director of the Business Renewables Centre of Canada, Alberta’s situation differs sharply from that of other provinces. “Everywhere else in the country, we see renewables being added to the grids at an accelerating pace and winning even in markets that are not specifically contracting for renewables,” Dy told the Calgary Herald. “In Alberta, we’re seeing a complete slowdown.”
The worldwide direction outlined in the source article is the opposite of that slowdown. By the end of the year, photovoltaics are expected to account for 10 percent of the world’s energy production and overtake nuclear fission in production capacity. The article also credits industrial supply chains with bringing the cost of solar-generated electricity to its lowest level yet.
In its wider critique, the source treats Alberta as part of a North American pattern: state and provincial governments using restrictive, short-sighted rules to determine which green-energy developments private land can accommodate. This examination of restrictive clean-energy siting laws adds context to that broader concern. Whether Alberta can resolve its renewable-energy problems and restart solar investment in the province is uncertain. For developments such as Owerko’s, the immediate policy issue is whether farmland protection allows for a site to generate power, sustain bees, and provide grazing for sheep simultaneously.
