The Southeast Has the Sun and the Land. When Will It Have the Policy?
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy released a report this week that puts numbers to something farmers and rural advocates in Alabama have felt for years: the Southeast is falling behind on agrivoltaics policy, and that gap is costing communities real money and real opportunity.
Agrivoltaics, the practice of growing crops or grazing livestock beneath solar panels on the same land, is expanding fast across the United States. The National Laboratory of the Rockies has documented 671 active sites generating more than 13 gigawatts of electricity. Massachusetts offers a $0.09 per kilowatt-hour bonus payment for qualifying dual-use solar. Colorado has distributed $1.3 million in agrivoltaics grants over three years. Maryland provides property tax exemptions. Meanwhile, Alabama and most of its neighbors offer nothing but voluntary guidance documents with no funding attached.
The reasons are tangled. Vertically integrated utilities dominate the Southeast and have little incentive to accelerate small-farm solar. The region has few renewable energy mandates. Federal support has also thinned: the USDA Rural Energy for America Program was suspended in early 2026, and federal officials have not restored it. A federal court injunction in April 2026 cleared 57 gigawatts of stalled solar projects nationwide, which is encouraging. Without state-level incentives, most Southeast farmers still can't make the math work for an agrivoltaic installation.
At Little USA Solar, we are working to change what's possible for Black Belt farmers, starting in Union Springs. Our model puts solar above soil without taking land out of production. Farmers get a second income stream, the land stays productive, and the community builds toward energy independence that has stayed out of reach in the Black Belt for far too long. The Southern Alliance notes that nine states introduced agrivoltaics legislation in 2025. That wave is coming to Alabama. We intend to be here, with a working model and real data, when it arrives.
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy is hosting a free webinar on August 12, 2026, with practitioners from South Carolina (Jim Johnson, SC Small Business Development Centers) and Massachusetts (Turner Jackson, MA Department of Energy Resources) who are building the policy case for agrivoltaics in their states. If you're a farmer, landowner, or rural advocate in the Southeast, it is worth your time.
