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September 4, 2025 14 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We spend a fair amount of time on the show
talking about energy generally and then fossil fuels and nuclear
and renewables. And you know, among renewables, they are the
biggest categories you normally talk about are wind and solar.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
And I got an.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Interesting note from a guy who sometimes suggests guests to
me about a term that I hadn't heard before, agri voltaics,
and the idea here, as I understand it is farmers
using some of their land at least for solar power.
And I have a lot of questions, and my next

(00:37):
guest probably has a lot of answers. Angela Burke is
director of operations at Pivot Energy and she joins us
here on KOA.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Angela, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
It's good to have you, good morning, and thanks for
having your ass.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
All right, well, we'll see hopefully there's not as much
delay as it seemed like there, but we'll do the
very best we can. So tell us a little bit
about and we're going to start very macro. What does
agrovoltaics mean and what does Pivot Energy do so.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
Agrovoltaics, as the word implies, combines agricultural production with solar
photo Voltaics aka solar energy production and pivot Energy.

Speaker 5 (01:26):
We develop finance and.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Storms across the tree, including many right here in our
backyard in Colorado.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Are you guys based in Colorado?

Speaker 5 (01:41):
Yes, we are.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Our headquarters is in Colorado, and this is a huge
market for us. So we have twenty five projects across
the state that are either active or under construction, and
all of those projects are incorporating agrivoltaics.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
And one of the interesting things to me as I
read a little bit more about this is that it's
it doesn't seem to be primarily farmers walking away from
farming and saying, turn all of my land into a
giant solar farm, but rather farmers using some part of
their land for solar and then continuing to you know,

(02:21):
grow crops or raised cattle or I don't know, have
bees living under the solar panels or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Can can you kind of elaborate on that for me?

Speaker 5 (02:32):
Certainly?

Speaker 3 (02:34):
So the shit energy we develop community scale solar so
that meets each.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Of our you know what, Angie, I'm sorry, let me
she probably can't hear me because we're doing Angie.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Let me just jump in here. Uh a Rod, you
see that phone number.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Okay, Angie, we're going to call you on the phone
to the zoom is just not working well enough. So
I'm gonna I'm gonna end the zoom thing and hopefully
we'll get Angie on the phone where maybe the audio
quality will be a little bit better. It's just too
distracting having that delay and having her having her audio
just drop out is a little a little too difficult.

(03:12):
So we're gonna try to get her on the phone.
So again, but let me just elaborate for a minute.
And by the way, if there's you know, farmers and
ranchers listening right now who have some experience with this,
right you've done it, you're thinking about do it? You know,
and something about you know something about it? Please text
me at five six six nine zero. And if you've
got questions that you'd want to ask the guest about it,
text us at five six six nine zero and let

(03:35):
me know there. All right, let's let's uh, let's see
if this is a little better. Hey, Angela, you hearing me?

Speaker 5 (03:39):
All right, I'm all right, I am back.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Okay, We'll give it a try, and if the if
the cell signal is just too bad, then we'll we'll
give up and we'll try another time. But anyway, Okay,
So I was asking you to describe this kind of
dual use thing and and are your projects typically farmers
who want to continue to farm but are just using
some of their land for solar.

Speaker 5 (04:01):
Yeah, so for energy, we lease the land from farmers,
and so we're operating at that community solar scale. That
means our sites are only about three up to about
fifty acres per project. So we work with landowners that
have hundreds or thousands of acres and so they can

(04:22):
parse off a smaller portion of that land for the
solar and can continue their other farm operations, and or
we can work with them in contract with them to
graze on the solar site as well.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
So I'm assuming that if a farmer or rancher is
going to do this, they must see some benefit to themselves,
either in higher income per acre for that part of
the land, or maybe equal income but steadier income per acre.
I mean, what is the economic conversation normally, like with

(04:57):
the farmers.

Speaker 5 (04:58):
Yeah, it's a co nation of both of those things.
So for that landowner, they're getting a higher and consistent
revenue stream from leasing those acres to solar versus leaving
those to other tenant farmers. And then for our grazing
and cropping partners that work in the solar array, we're
paying them to work in the solar array and have

(05:20):
more production for their operations versus them having to go
out and pay for more acreage beyond the home farm.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
So I don't know if you'd be willing to answer
this question, but maybe if maybe with a range rather
than a number, how much might a farm or rancher
expect to earn, let's say, per acre from having your
solar generation stuff on their land.

Speaker 5 (05:46):
The toughest answer, of course, is it depends, So it's
going to be a wide range that veries state by
state and also varies depending on how close you are
to the power lines to connect into the grid. So
I can't give a number, but I'll say you can
always reach out to Pivot Energy anytime and we can
talk about your individual parcel.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
So and again this sort of goes back to the
first question, but kind of trying to think about what
a farmer might be getting for the solar versus what
a farmer might be getting for growing food.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
But again I guess going back to the previous thing.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
The farmer must either think that at least for that
part of land, they're getting either more from you or,
as we said, a steadier stream.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Otherwise they probably wouldn't do it right.

Speaker 5 (06:31):
Yep, yep, exactly, And we work really collaboratively with those
landowners and try to prioritize maybe parts of their land
that are currently fallow or are being underutilized, they're underproductive,
so we can get creative about exactly where we cite
the solar and really kind of work around their overall
goals for the site.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
So, just to be totally transparent with you, I've been
a pretty big skeptic of renewable energy in the sense
of I'd like to see it be economically viable without
any government subsidies.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Because I don't have anything against solar.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
I got some much bigger problems with wind than I
do with solar, but I won't get into that today.
But I have an enormous problem with government subsidies. So
most of the government subsidies appear to be going away,
and the federal subsidies at least, And I'm curious how
much that impacts your business model and how much you
think that will affect your ability to get farmers to

(07:29):
work with you at a price that everybody can agree on. Sure.

Speaker 5 (07:33):
Sure, So Pivot Energy feels really confident in our outlook.
So we have some really strong plans in place to
basically preemptively procure our panels and other equipment to get
us through at least the next three years. Now, after
three years, the whole industry is going to need to shift.

(07:54):
And yes, those lease rates might change a bit, other
design choices might change a bit. You know, the end
of the day, American needs to produce more energy. Our
demand is ever growing day by day, and solar energy
needs to be a part of that US energy mix.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
So I'm far from expert on the tax policy regarding
this stuff, but it seems to me that in that
big beautiful bill, some of the issues one't so much
about when you buy the parts as when the system
is actually operating. So I'm unclear on how buying the
solar panels in advance will help you keep tax credits

(08:32):
that you don't get if the system isn't operating.

Speaker 5 (08:35):
Yes, so quick clarification for the listeners is that those
tax credit timelines and deadline really have to do with
starting construction and so that can be physical construction on site. Okay,
pre purchasing and procuring that equipment can't count towards that.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
Okay, got it.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
And I think where I where my error or confusion was.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
What I say was correct.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
But it was correct for residential solar on the roof
of a house, which is probably quite different from what
you're doing.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
So for residential solar.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
If the project isn't finished in producing energy by the
end of this year, you can't get the tax credit.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
But for what you're doing, it's a little bit different.

Speaker 5 (09:17):
There's a little different timeline.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Different dead lack that makes that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
So and you said, you know, get through the next
three years, was your implication, uh, from from that that
you hope or expect that the next president, especially if
the next president is a of the other political party,
would reinstate certain subsidies and incentives for these projects.

Speaker 5 (09:42):
So no, that more so has to do with the
overall time clock on that kind of step down of
the federal tax credit in those three years, and even today,
we're really actually looking more towards state level policy to
make more favorable markets for us. So it's like Colorado
and like Illinois have really strong renewable energy standards and

(10:06):
goals and have really good policy that we think will
weather the storm. Well, pass that tax credit going away.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
And again not to be like snide or anything, but
like good policy to you, like you might mean good
policy and something that is pushing people to do more solar.
I might not share your view of what is good policy.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
I want.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
I want whatever produces the most reliable, cheapest energy for Colorado.
And if it's if that is solar, than fine, and
if it's not solar, then that's also fine.

Speaker 5 (10:40):
Yeah. Well, I would just say that solar is the
lowest cost new energy production to add to the grid,
and it's faster and easier to dispatch and build and
get active versus something like adding nuclear. Right, And so
when I'm talking about favorable good policy, I'm really talking
about community a solar program that allow anyone and everyone

(11:04):
to benefit from that lower cost of production.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Is it lower cost even even if there were no subsidies?

Speaker 5 (11:11):
And short answer is I'm not on the financial modeling.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Okay, all right, that's fine. Let's move on to another question.
So a friend of mine who does a lot of
work in this space. His name is Robert Bryce. He
keeps a database of communities, counties and so on that
are pushing back on some of this stuff. And I
think a lot of what he's focused on are much
bigger projects than you're talking about thousands of acres. But

(11:39):
the kind of things you're doing working with farmers, what's
the permitting experience like, and are you getting the kinds
of pushback and refusals to allow your projects the way
that it seems to becoming quite common.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
With the very large scale projects right now.

Speaker 5 (12:00):
Yeah, I think for Pivot Energy, we're in a great
position with again the scale of our projects and that
commitment to one hundred percent agroboltics. So we're truly working
with those communities and with those farmers and ranchers to
find the best co use of those lands. And so
I understand, and there certainly are those pushbacks and the

(12:23):
questions about losing prime farmland, but quite frankly, as a country,
we're losing two thousand acres a day to other retail
and urban and housing development, and really we see solar,
especially at our scale, as a way to maintain that farmland,
not taking it away from production.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
All Right, I've got two quick listener questions and then
we'll call it a day. The one listener who farms
in northeastern Colorado.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Is wondering if there are.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Ways that the contract can be tailored so that, for example,
the landowner might put some money into the project, pay
for infrastructure or pay for panels or something and get
a higher return from the electricity being generated or the
contract standard.

Speaker 5 (13:15):
So that would really apply to it. Sounds like them
wanting to maybe pursue their own solar array or partial
ownership type of a model, and that would really it
would look a little different from what Pivot Energy is
typical business modeling. I got it. There is potential maybe

(13:36):
for different like grant funding, et cetera. They could reach
out to me anytime to point them in those directions,
but it's really a little out of the wheelhouse of
our model.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Gotcha.

Speaker 1 (13:45):
And one last listener question. At the end of the lease,
I assume you've had you put I don't know what
you put on the ground. You put concrete pads or
you put posts or whatever. The solar panels are going on.
At the end of the lease, do you remove that stuff?

Speaker 5 (13:59):
Yestely, So, actually, we at the beginning. When we're permitting
a project, we post a decommissioning bond, so a removal bond,
so those moneys are set aside from day one, and
then are you to fully remove the system, everything above
and below ground, and so our overall goal is to

(14:19):
restore that land to ideally better condition than what we
found it in.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Excellent. That's a great answer.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
I think my listener was expecting a different answer, so
that's that's excellent. Angela Burke is director of operations at
Pivot Energy. Pivot Energy dot net is the website. Thanks
for your time, Angela. Is very interesting conversation.

Speaker 5 (14:39):
Great thanks for having me, ros I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
Glad to

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