Land use and economic trade-offs of large-scale solar in agricultural regions: marginal national impacts, significant regional variations

Large-scale solar generation is critical for energy transitions. In Australia, increased solar production to meet emission targets means its land footprint increasingly competes with agricultural land. Understanding the scale and location of agricultural land use change and potential profitability losses from large-scale solar farms is essential for a sustainable transition, yet comprehensive spatial assessments are lacking. We quantified these potential trade-offs through spatially explicit modelling of 1568 scenarios that account for a range of uncertainties about utility-scale solar design, performance, land suitability and energy production targets. Our analysis considered siting strategies that either prioritised the highest solar yield or reduced the land use trade-off ratio of energy to agricultural profitability. The results show that meeting national utility-scale solar targets could convert up to 273,000 ha (0.28% of total agricultural land). While a yield-focused approach could result in annual agricultural profit losses of up to $29 million, adopting an approach that reduced opportunity costs on agricultural production can reduce these losses to $2.6 million for the same energy generation. Even the larger of these two figures represents less than 0.03% of Australia's farm-gate output. Impacts are primarily concentrated in grazing regions of Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales. ‘Agrisolar’—co-location of agriculture or grazing with solar development could help further mitigate agricultural production and regional impacts. These results show that while the overall national impact on agricultural land from large-scale solar expansion may be marginal, strategic spatial planning and agrisolar (where feasible) are crucial for mitigating adverse regional effects.