Photovoltaics Supporting Cultural and Community EcoSystem Services (PV-SuCCESS)
Creating a decision-making framework for ecosystem services to enhance community benefits
Solar projects can enhance community benefits and ecosystem services, offering host communities more than just energy production facilities. Habitat creation, improvement in water quality, and other stackable benefits on solar sites may mitigate negative community perceptions and provide other services like pollinator habitat, improved soil health, and carbon sequestration. Documenting host community ecosystem service benefits and creating a clear path for integrating the research findings into local and state decision-making processes would allow for proactive planning by both regulators and developers.
The Photovoltaics Supporting Cultural and Community EcoSystem Services (PV-SuCCESS) project is conducting both physical research and data modeling and sociocultural research with communities to create a decision-making framework and supporting tools to do the following:
- Fill gaps in the scientific record on solar-specific opportunities and risks to providing physical, biological, and chemical ecosystem services.
- Directly engage potential framework users in shaping the research, the form of the ecosystem services tool, and the implementation pathways.
- Examine ecosystem priorities across different types of host communities: tribal, underserved, energy transition, rural, and urban.
- Recognize the critical role of providing cultural services that overcome permitting barriers and explore mitigation opportunities that allow projects to proceed.
PV-SuCCESS will deploy a holistic ecosystem services framework for enhanced decision-making by industry, local and state authorities, and tribal communities in the Midwest. The project will specifically consider three ecosystem use cases that reflect different priorities and different ways of structuring the framework: priorities identified by local (host) communities, priorities of state agencies that have authority over energy or ecosystem standards, and priorities of tribal communities that are increasingly hosts for, partners in, or developers of solar energy projects.
About the Project
The project is led by the Great Plains Institute in partnership with the University of Minnesota, Argonne National Laboratory, the Midwest Tribal Energy Resources Association, and the Minnesota Clean Energy Resources Teams. Additional organizations supporting PV-SuCCESS include multiple Minnesota state agencies, tribal nations, the Center for Watershed Protection, and Xcel Energy.
This material is based upon work supported by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the Deploying Solar with Wildlife and Ecosystem Services Benefits funding program, award number DE-EE0010385.
