June 7, 2026
Water scarcity is a growing concern in California’s agriculture industry, driven by a changing hotter and drier climate and the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which requires municipalities to bring groundwater use to sustainable levels by 2040. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) estimates that the combination of these forces will reduce water availability for agricultural use in the Central Valley by 20% in less than 15 years, which could lead to the fallowing of up to 900,000 acres of land and 50,000 jobs lost in the San Joaquin Valley alone.
While these projections are scary, the future is not yet written. With concerted effort using different approaches and innovations, there are opportunities to limit the negative impacts of the growing water scarcity problem in California. Agrivoltaics can be a valuable part of the solution.
Climate Resilience Strategy for California Agriculture
The California Department of Food & Agriculture (CDFA) recently published its Climate Resilience Strategy for California Agriculture, and it points to two key approaches that can help ensure a water system for agricultural resilience in a hotter, drier future – including how agrivoltaics can play an important role.
1 – Reduce on-farm water use.
The CDFA calls for expanded technical assistance and incentive programs, such as the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP), which helps growers adopt new technologies and practices to reduce on-farm water use by driving down irrigation withdrawals and reducing evapotranspiration (ET) on cropland.
Agrivoltaics can play an important role in reducing ET, which is the combined loss of water through evaporation from soil and transpiration from plants. The shading from panels cools air and soil temperatures, which reduces evaporation and increases soil moisture retention – the “evapo” portion of ET. Additionally, the shading from panels reduces photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), or the portion of sunlight that plants use for photosynthesis, which reduces the amount of water the plants release – the “transpiration” part of ET. Reduced ET and improved soil moisture retention means crops growing below and between panels can require less irrigation.
– thanks to the shade and its cooling effect. (de Araujo Azeredo et al. 2026)
2 – Harmonize the food-water-energy nexus.
The CDFA report points out that 6.8 terawatt-hours of electricity per year – enough to power 750,000 homes – are used to pump groundwater for agricultural use in the Central Valley alone, with costs that exceed $20 billion annually. Additionally, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimates there are approximately 8,000 diesel-powered agricultural irrigation pumps in California – representing approximately 25% of the total number of pumps in operation. With diesel prices reaching all-time highs in California this Spring, the cost of continuing to rely on diesel may not prove economically sustainable for some farmers.
While the total level of pumping will need to decrease to meet SGMA requirements, it is also important that the pumping that continues happen in a sustainable way – both economically and environmentally – whether the power is grid-supplied or self-supplied. Solar energy produced by agrivoltaics can play an important role here.
A lifecycle analysis study conducted in olive orchards in a semi-arid climate similar to California’s and published in Science of the Total Environment, demonstrated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions savings of 41% to 67% by transitioning from all diesel-powered to primarily solar-powered irrigation pumping during the peak season.
A study conducted by researchers at UC Merced and UC Berkeley and published in the Journal of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) in March 2026 shows that on-site solar generation can directly replace grid-supplied electricity for most groundwater pumping. A solar array on 1 hectare of land produces enough electricity to pump between 10 and 45 hectare-meters of water per year (equivalent to 40-180 Olympic-size swimming pools), with the variation due to differences in well depth and the associated power required for pumping. Even in areas where groundwater levels are deep, sunny summers and the resulting peak solar generation provides sufficient power to meet pumping requirements in the high-demand summer months.
The CDFA Strategy specifically points to agrivoltaics as a pathway to decreasing irrigation requirements and optimizing electricity production, and stakeholder feedback on the report calls for creating incentive programs for agrivoltaics, including funding grants to support pilot projects, demonstration sites, and research.
Potential Water Savings for California Crops
Currently, there are several agrivoltaics research projects happening at academic institutions across the state, including UC Davis, Chico State, Cal Poly Pomona, and others. These researchers are building on a growing body of work from around the world demonstrating how integrating crop production and solar production can reduce water use.
Several published studies include crops that are also grown extensively in California, as shown in the table below, underscoring the potential role agrivoltaics can play in sustainably managing the state’s dwindling water supply.
Table 1: Impacts of agrivoltaics’ shading on water and yield in select crops grown in California
To contextualize the potential impacts of agrivoltaics-driven water savings in California, let’s look at grapes and lettuce. According to the USDA’s 2025 California agriculture review, there are nearly 750,000 acres of land producing grapes and 250,000 acres of land producing lettuces. At a typical irrigation level of 2 acre-feet of water per acre per year for grapes and 3 acre-feet of water per acre per year for lettuce, this means these two crops typically require approximately 2,250,000 acre-feet of water annually. If agrivoltaics can reduce this water use by an average of 20% – equivalent to 450,000 acre-feet per year – that would account for nearly 10% of the 4,600,000 acre-feet of water use reductions the state needs to achieve by 2040. While not every acre in production will implement agrivoltaics during this time period, of course, this example illustrates the potential for meaningful water savings through the integration of agricultural production and solar production across multiple crops.
As always, let us know what questions you have about agrivoltaics in general or specifically in the California context. Subscribe to HARVEST Highlights, our monthly newsletter to stay up-to-date on the latest agrivoltaics insights, updates, and events.