Solar Farms Look to Produce Something Apart From Power: Pollinator Friendly Habitat

It’s not your average solar farm.

The glassy panels stand in a meadow. Wildflowers sway in the breeze, bursts of purple, pink, yellow, orange and white among native grasses. A monarch butterfly flits from one blossom to the next. Dragonflies zip, bees hum and goldfinches trill.

As solar projects unfurl across the United States, sites like this one in Ramsey, Minn., stand out because they offer a way to fight climate change while also tackling another ecological crisis: a global biodiversity collapse, driven in large part by habitat loss.

The sun’s clean energy is a powerful weapon in the battle against climate change. But the sites that capture that energy take up land that wildlife needs to survive and thrive. Solar farms could blanket millions of acres in the United States over the coming decades.

So developers, operators, biologists and environmentalists are teaming up with an innovative strategy.

“We have to address both challenges at the same exact time,” said Rebecca Hernandez, a professor of ecology at the University of California, Davis, whose research focuses on how to do just that.

Insects, those small animals that play a mighty role in supporting life on Earth, are facing alarming declines. Solar farms can offer them food and shelter by providing a diverse mix of native plants.