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Champion of the Year Finalists
Recognizing an exceptional individual whose unwavering commitment and influential leadership have propelled the integration of agrivoltaics and dual-use projects to new heights within their organization and beyond.
Angela "Angie" Burke
As director of O&M at Pivot Energy, Angela Burke is blazing the trail to a brighter, cleaner and more abundant future with prodigious prowess. Under her leadership, Pivot brought in more agrivoltaics projects last year than any other company—with over 30 sites in 2023 alone. There are thousands of sheep and dozens of new solar farmers digging into new opportunities under solar panels because of Angie and Pivot’s commitment to building a 100% agrivoltaics portfolio, which is becoming a reality faster than anyone might have believed possible.
With a deep passion and a determination to see the industry do better with the land they manage, Angela has been outspoken on the topic of agrivoltaics. You can find her advocating for agrivoltaics events both large and small. She has spent countless hours hearing the stories of farmers. And she has inspired Pivot to be open minded to other agriculture innovation ideas and agritourism ideas as well.
A true leader and pioneer, Angie is best in her own words:
"These dual-use sites have positive impacts that go far beyond the array, including carbon sequestration, access to locally grown food, and improved eco-systems. The biggest impact though, is on the next generation of farmers. Little cowboys, like this one, will be able to not just survive but thrive on their family farms and solar farms. And why not thrive on both? [...] It's possible, and it's definitely time, for every solar array to leverage agrivoltaics and to cultivate true dual-harvest that benefit us all." — Watch Angela speak on agrivoltaics and dual harvest potential.
Iain Ward
Working on the front lines with farmers every day, Iain Ward is bridging the understanding between agricultural landowners, farmers and solar developers and building the working foundation that makes the promise of agrivoltaics real. Energetic and prolific, Iain is actively partnering with academic institutions to foster scientifically based studies of photosynthetically available radiation, soil health, and agricultural production under and around agrivoltaic projects.
A specialist as knowledgeable as he is passionate, Iain is an experienced leader in keeping farmers farming and farmland farmable. He excels in creating income diversification, market security, modernization, implementation of soil and water conservation practices and farm succession for agricultural producers throughout Massachusetts and the Northeast. Iain is uniquely capable of developing site specific farm logistics plans that address the needs of the land, the farmer, the solar developer, and the community.
Making it his professional mission to lift the form and function of American farmland for its farmers both now and in the future, Iain’s company, Solar Agricultural Services (SolAg), also educates its customers on what it is to be a farmer and the needs that must be met to enable the production of a crop grown under solar panel arrays. SolAg is working to bridge the disconnect between the renewable energy industry and the farming industry to ensure that customer’s electrical generation is not jeopardized while maintaining farming operations underneath the panel.
Iain makes his case around the country, enthusiastically and insightfully communicating both the opportunities and realities of solar farming. He works alongside many other agricultural organizations, nonprofits and institutions to help educate stakeholders. And he advocates to policymakers crafting legislation for better policy to incentivize agrivoltaics and build a foundation for its long-term agricultural integrity, on equal ground with other agricultural practices.
Byron Kominek
The man behind the now-famous, ground breaking and trend-setting Jack’s Solar Garden is Byron Kominek. Byron is a former U.S. diplomat and a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, who lived in various parts of Africa for over 6 years.
In 2016, Byron Kominek moved to his family's 24 acre farm south of Longmont, Colorado where he wanted to see their land do more and be more. The farm had been growing and selling hay for about 50 years, but it was no longer paying the bills. So, in 2017, Byron looked at new land management options and learned of agrivoltaics, a change to Boulder County's Land Use Code was approved, and Jack's Solar Garden was born– a 5 acre, 1.2 MW agrivoltaic research site, the largest in the United States.
Byron’s goal is to rapidly grow the field of agrivoltaics so that it takes root across the country as a best practice for maximizing both the productivity of our land and its stewardship. As such, Jack’s Solar Garden has gone the extra mile(s) to maintain a strong public facing educational component since the beginning of Jack’s Solar Garden and regularly hosted students and community members out to the farm to learn about agrivoltaics.
Now a public entity has been created as the nonprofit side of Jack’s Solar Garden, known as the Colorado Agrivoltaics Learning Center, which has begun its own difference-making legacy. With just a team of four and a 2023 budget of $200,000, the level of visibility and impact they’ve had despite their size is a testament to their scrappy ability to find the key levers and pull them.
Byron has changed policy in Boulder County and works to inspire neighboring conservative counties, influencing two Colorado spending Bills and more recently a personal property tax incentive for agrivoltaics. And Byron is breaking new ground in financing structures too, as well as engineering designs – and is encouraging a design challenge to reduce the amount of heavy steel required to install stable solar panels as high off the ground as agrivoltaics requires.
The creative possibilities are almost endless: For refugee families, for example, who find themselves relocated from Afghanistan to an apartment in Denver, farms like Byron’s can be a place to tend the land and grow crops for free, in exchange for weeding and monitoring the panels. Jack’s Solar Garden has become a community gathering place, hosting outdoor yoga classes, community dinners and music events, small school vegetable gardens, and more – all part of his educational outreach strategy.
Greg Barron-Gafford
Greg Barron-Gafford is the Professor & Associate Director of the School Garden Workshop at The University of Arizona. Greg’s groundbreaking work has been building the very foundations of the field of agrivoltaics for over a decade. Considered by many to be one of the movement's founding fathers, Greg was among the first serious academics to take an earnest look at agrivoltaics and dig in with gusto. He began this work in southern Arizona to study the benefits across the food-energy-water nexus, and over the years have developed a national and international program connecting with researchers in Colorado and Oregon (USA), and in Africa and the Middle East.
Greg is driven to develop science-based solutions to help people adapt to the increasing pressures that come from a changing climate. A biogeographer, which sits his science on that exciting nexus of understanding how external forces (like environmental and human factors) and internal characteristics (like leaf biochemistry and plant functional type) act as determinants of where species can live and thrive, he is one of the planet’s preeminent interdisciplinary thinkers and cross-pollinating professional.
His organization, the Barron-Gafford research group, is actively studying the interactive effects of vegetation and climate change on plant & ecosystem function to inform forecasting and decision makers. Critically important work, Greg and his team are studying how semiarid plants and ecosystems respond to threats from drought, climate change, and human pressures like over grazing or clearing for renewable energy production.
Greg is leading the charge to solve for problems in Biogeography, Plant Ecophysiology, Ecosystem Ecology, Ecohydrology, and Critical Zone Science. Centered on developing our understanding of semiarid ecosystem responses and adaptation to climatic changes, such as increased temperature and reduced precipitation, his research is providing the root understandings required for life on a hotter planet to survive and thrive.
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