thatHarrisburg, PA – Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding at this time launched steering for landowners contemplating photo voltaic manufacturing on farms and in Pennsylvania’s rural communities. The information outlines the Wolf Administration’s help for applied sciences that create jobs and generate farm revenue with out compromising meals and fiber manufacturing. Photo voltaic vitality is a climate-smart expertise that achieves targets whereas lowering emissions and serving to to cut back the damaging results of local weather change.
“Pennsylvania’s farms are a priceless useful resource for producing meals, defending our surroundings, and feeding our financial system,” Redding mentioned. “Photo voltaic vitality manufacturing has nice potential for producing electrical energy to energy farm operations and speed up Pennsylvania’s transition to a clear vitality future. When correctly deliberate, well-placed and correctly upkeep, photo voltaic manufacturing doesn’t compromise or cut back priceless farm sources, however as an alternative enhances them.”
Points guiding enterprise resolution making embrace:
- Sustainable web site choice prioritizes rooftops, parking heaps or brownfields over agricultural or forest land, avoiding high quality land places altogether.
- Upkeep that protects the soil and pollinators by native vegetation with out invasive species; provides precedence to grazing in comparison with slicing, paying farmers for the service; and embrace decommissioning plans to completely restore any land upon completion of a undertaking.
- Integrating vitality and agricultural manufacturing in a method that’s complementary quite than aggressive.
The steering outlines extra issues for farm homeowners together with the affect of photo voltaic manufacturing on the farm’s enrollment in preferential tax applications, preserved farm standing, native zoning, environmental permits and conservation plans and different points.
The entire information, together with an inventory of regularly requested questions and extra sources for going photo voltaic, may be discovered on the division’s web site, agriculture.pa.gov.
For extra data on climate-smart methods for presidency, group leaders, agriculture and different companies, go to the Pennsylvania Local weather Motion Plan. Discover extra data, funding, and different sources for making your farm extra productive and sustainable on the State Conservation Fee’s pages at agriculture.pa.gov.
MEDIA CONTACT: Shannon Powers – shpowers@pa.gov, 717.603.2056
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