D3264: Co-locating pollinator habitat with solar energy infrastructure: A potential win-win in conservation and energy production

Renewable energy has been rapidly expanding, with solar energy being the most prolific in the United States (EIA 2023). Key stakeholders of these projects, including energy companies, government agencies at a federal and state level, and local landowners, have become increasingly interested in co-locating pollinator plantings with the infrastructure of new solar energy facilities. Preliminary research suggests that this interest is valid; pairing conservation habitat with infrastructure may enhance local insect communities and provide benefits to nearby agricultural fields (Dolezal et al. 2021; Walston et al. 2022). However, there is uncertainty regarding the costs, benefits, and operational risks associated with attempting this pairing of conservation habitat with energy infrastructure. This research investigated the establishment and value of pollinator habitat in four large-scale ( >20 hectares) solar facilities in Indiana and Illinois and characterized the pollinator and natural enemy communities within them. One-way ANOVA results indicate that areas of solar facilities seeded with pollinator habitat have higher abundances of bees than soybean fields (p = 0.005) and conventional turfgrass (p = 0.014). Bee diversity, by contrast, was not appreciably different between conventional turfgrass (H’ = 8.3857) and pollinator habitat (H’ = 8.3909), suggesting that, while pollinator habitat is attracting more bees, these spaces are not attracting a high diversity of bees. This research adds evidence to this new field of conservation and energy production that pollinator habitat can be beneficially paired with solar infrastructure.