World's First Country Powered 100 Percent by Solar
- Editor OGN Daily
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
It's the eighth country to run exclusively on renewables, but perhaps even more intriguing is the way it was achieved here - they used agrivoltaics.
The late Pope Francis’ goal of powering the Vatican entirely by solar energy is happening now as Vatican City becomes the first fully powered solar state. Yes, Vatican City is a sovereign state - a full country. Although it should be pointed out it is the smallest in the world at just over 100 acres.
But you will not see it's magnificent buildings plastered in solar panels, as the power is drawn in from nearby fields. It is one of those lovely win win scenarios. Vatican City gets clean energy and local crops are given a boost too, thanks to agrivoltaics.
This is the combination of agriculture with solar photovoltaic technology (which converts sunlight directly into electricity) on the same land. Farmers use agrivoltaics because it increases their crop yields. This is not entirely intuitive to most people, but agrivoltaic yield increases exist because there is a microclimate created underneath the solar panels that conserves water for the plants and helps protect them from excess sun (along with extreme winds, hail and soil erosion). The temperatures under agrivoltaics are cooler, milder and all around more pleasant for many types of crops.
The Vatican’s agrivoltaic farm is located on the Holy See’s property at Santa Maria di Galeria on the outskirts of Rome. This farm is much larger than Vatican City itself as it has over 1,000 acres.
Before the Vatican, 7 counties ran off of 100 percent renewable energy: Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now we have an 8th country running - but this one relies solely on solar agrivoltaics.
Who will be next? Almost all countries have more than enough farmland to run their grids completely from solar agrivoltaics. For example, Canada could use less than 1 percent of its farmlands and eliminate fossil fuels entirely from the grid. For many countries, the economics heavily favour agrivoltaics as you get money from both increased crops and solar is the cheapest source of electricity in history according to the IEA.