The public debate surrounding open-field power plant developments is particularly intense in Austria – a country with a strong agricultural identity and a pronounced awareness of its landscape. Farmers, municipalities, and local residents raise objections to the conversion of arable land into dedicated power line corridors, to the alteration of the landscape, and to the perceived loss of farmers’ livelihoods. This resistance is not irrational; it reflects real conflicts of interest and legitimate questions about long-term land use.
Agri-photovoltaics, or Agri-PV for short, offers a conceptual solution to this tension. The principle of dual use – using the same area simultaneously for agricultural production and electricity generation – doesn’t resolve the seemingly insurmountable conflict between the energy transition and agriculture, but it significantly mitigates it. The Austrian Energy Act (EAG) defines two fundamental variants of Agri-PV: animal use (grazing under or between the modules) and plant use (arable farming under elevated modules).
Technically, agri-PV systems can be divided into two categories. Ground-level, elevated systems are more cost-effective and less visually impactful, but allow for more limited cultivation between the rows. Elevated systems with a clearance height of three to six meters allow the use of standard agricultural machinery and offer greater flexibility in land use, but are more expensive to install. Tracking systems that follow the sun’s path optimize yield and can be programmed to maximize sunlight exposure for the plants below.
For farmers, agri-PV offers multiple economic advantages: In addition to supplementary income through land leasing or direct electricity purchase, the modules protect crops from hail, heavy rain, and heat waves, reduce pesticide use in some crops, and dampen evaporation during dry periods. These synergistic effects simultaneously increase the economic stability of farms and their attractiveness as partners for solar developers.
Biodiversity and ecology: Solar parks as an opportunity for nature
A widespread misconception in the public debate is the blanket equation of ground-mounted photovoltaic systems with soil sealing and environmental destruction. This equation is empirically false. Photovoltaic systems do not seal the soil in the same way as roads, parking lots, or commercial buildings – only the bases of the mounting structures are paved; the rest of the surface remains permeable. The Austrian Conference on Spatial Planning (ÖROK) monitoring confirms this with a remarkably small figure: In Austria, only one square kilometer of soil has been sealed by ground-mounted PV and wind turbines combined – a vanishingly small value compared to the 1,238 square kilometers of sealed transport surfaces.
On the contrary, studies and practical examples show that properly planned and extensively managed solar parks can significantly increase biodiversity at their location compared to intensively farmed arable land. Wien Energie was able to demonstrate at the Guntramsdorf and Schafflerhofstraße sites that converting intensively used arable land into extensively managed grassland with photovoltaic modules significantly increased the diversity of plants, insects, and birds. Through wildflower meadows, nesting aids, reptile habitats, and extensive maintenance, solar parks can become valuable biotopes that once again provide habitat for typical agricultural species such as the European hamster, grey partridge, and skylark.
The Pöchlarn eco-solar biotope in Lower Austria is a particularly interesting example of this integrated approach: On an area of five hectares with 10,000 modules and a capacity of 4.1 megawatts, 90 percent of the area is used for biodiversity, while the remaining ten percent is used for agri-PV trials with various management models. The University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) is providing scientific support for the project. This approach demonstrates that solar parks can make a net-positive contribution to ecology not despite, but precisely because of, their land requirements, if ecological parameters are incorporated into the planning from the outset.
Photovoltaic Austria and the Austrian Institute for Spatial Planning have developed a joint planning guideline for ground-mounted photovoltaic systems based on these findings. This guideline serves as a reference for municipalities, planners, and nature conservation organizations. It includes requirements for structural design, ecological functionality, land management, and the efficiency of permitting procedures.
Economic efficiency and investment logic of large open-field facilities
The economic attractiveness of solar parks and ground-mounted installations has increased dramatically in recent years, primarily driven by the global decline in module prices. The global LCOE (levelized cost of electricity) for photovoltaic power plants fell from US$0.17 per kilowatt-hour in 2013 to US$0.04 in 2023 – a decrease of approximately 76 percent. In 2024, the weighted average levelized cost of electricity for large-scale PV power plants was US$0.043 per kilowatt-hour, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
For Europe using single-axis tracking technology – the tracking module arrays typical of modern solar parks – Wood Mackenzie analyses predict electricity generation costs will be around ten percent lower in 2025 than in the previous year. This technological advancement now makes new solar parks in Austria economically competitive with conventional generation methods, even without subsidies – provided that grid connection is guaranteed and regulatory hurdles can be overcome.
For institutional investors, solar parks offer attractive features of a long-term infrastructure investment: predictable cash flows through twenty-year renewable energy market premium contracts, low operating costs, no fuel price risks, and a stable regulatory framework. The European Investment Bank’s willingness to provide financing—250 million euros for the Burgenland portfolio alone, plus 80 million euros for the Püspök agri-PV project—signals that this investment class is also considered systemically important at the European level.
The economic logic for farmers who make their land available for agri-PV systems or operate them themselves is also compelling. Long-term lease payments from leasing land to solar developers offer a stable, weather-resistant source of income in an agricultural environment increasingly affected by climate risks. At the same time, the protective properties of the modules enable increased yields and reduced crop protection costs for certain crops. This dual economic benefit is a key driver for the growing willingness of the agricultural sector to participate constructively in agri-PV projects.
Austria’s federal states compared: A disparity with consequences
According to data from the PV Austria Factsheet for the end of 2024, installed PV capacity is very unevenly distributed across the nine federal states: Lower Austria leads with 1,994 megawatts peak, followed by Upper Austria with 1,767 megawatts peak, Styria with 1,539 megawatts peak, and Burgenland with 1,027 megawatts peak. The western federal states of Tyrol (536 MWp), Carinthia (519 MWp), Salzburg (470 MWp), and Vorarlberg (274 MWp) lag significantly behind, while Vienna reaches 300 megawatts peak.
This distribution partly reflects natural factors such as solar irradiance and available land, but is largely explained by the varying quality of energy spatial planning and regulatory frameworks. Carinthia, with its four-hectare limit for PV installations, makes it structurally impossible to realize large-scale open-field projects and thus effectively excludes itself from the main growth segment of the solar market. Tyrol, due to the topographical features of its mountainous region and stricter nature conservation requirements, is hesitant, but according to the Tyrolean potential analysis, it possesses considerable suitable areas with a usable potential of around 730 gigawatt-hours.
Upper Austria has long had a more lenient legal framework for the construction of photovoltaic (PV) systems, which partly explains the relative success of this federal state. Lower Austria’s climate and energy roadmap aims to generate around 4,500 gigawatt-hours per year from PV systems by 2030, with agri-PV playing a prominent role in the strategy. The differing political stances of the state governments regarding land designation thus have direct and quantifiable effects on the progress of expansion and ultimately on achieving the national target.
The new Electricity Industry Act: Structural reform with relevance to PV
In December 2025, after more than four years of political debate, the new Electricity Industry Act (ElWG), dubbed the “Cheaper Electricity Act,” was passed by the National Council. This law replaces the Electricity Industry and Organization Act of 2010 and brings about the long-overdue reform of the Austrian electricity market regulations. Several elements are of direct relevance to the photovoltaic (PV) industry.
The PV peak load limit of 70 percent of module power for new systems with a grid-effective capacity of 3.68 kilowatts or more relieves grid congestion without completely blocking the economic viability of self-consumption. PV systems up to 20 kilowatts of grid-effective capacity can continue to feed into the grid free of charge; for larger systems, a fixed infrastructure contribution of 0.05 cents per kilowatt-hour will apply from 2027. The right to feed into the grid for systems under 15 kilowatts remains unchanged, up to the extent of the existing grid connection capacity.
A systemically significant new regulation concerns citizen-owned energy: The Electricity Industry Act (ElWG) expands existing energy community models and creates new opportunities for energy sharing within Austria. This is relevant for ground-mounted solar projects insofar as local energy communities can become more attractive as alternative marketing structures for solar power and increase the social acceptance of projects when local residents directly benefit from the energy generated. The electricity market reform also signals that Austrian policymakers intend to fundamentally modernize the framework for renewable energies – although the concrete implementation of the numerous detailed regulations will still take time.
Structural opportunities and strategic perspectives up to 2030 and beyond
Austria’s starting point for the further expansion of solar parks and ground-mounted installations is characterized by a fundamental contradiction: The economic and technological potential is convincingly present, but the political and regulatory framework has not yet consistently utilized it. This contradiction is not an unavoidable constant – it is a political choice with changeable implications.
On the opportunity side, geography is a key factor: The eastern Austrian states, particularly Burgenland, southern Styria, and parts of Lower Austria, have solar irradiance levels comparable to those in southern Germany or the Czech Republic, enabling ground-mounted solar installations with high full-load hours. Combined with falling module prices and rising grid electricity prices, the economic viability of solar parks is continuously improving. The year 2025 exemplified how vulnerable Austria is due to its dependence on hydropower: A below-average rainfall year caused hydropower production to plummet by 24.8 percent, once again making Austria a net importer of electricity. Diversifying the renewable energy mix with more photovoltaics and wind power is therefore not only a climate goal but also a direct question of security of supply.
At the systemic level, the combination of photovoltaics with large-scale battery storage and wind power in hybrid plant concepts offers a qualitative advancement that paves the way for Austria to achieve a resilient, decentralized energy supply. The Burgenland model – hybrid parks of wind, photovoltaics, and battery storage on the same land with the same grid connections – is pioneering the efficient use of existing infrastructure. When areas already designated for wind power are combined with PV modules, separate permitting processes are eliminated, grid connection costs are shared, and the temporal complementarity of wind and solar power increases the overall plant’s capacity factor.
However, the realization of these opportunities hinges on whether political actors create the necessary structural conditions. PV Austria specifically calls for: comprehensive energy spatial planning in all nine federal states, an annual evaluation of the implementation rate with sanctions for failure to meet targets, and a greening of the fiscal equalization system that rewards the federal states for good climate performance. These demands are not the maximalist positions of an interest group, but rather rational responses to a measurable planning gap.
The question of societal consensus remains open. Resistance in communities and from parts of the agricultural sector against purely open-field solar projects is real and must be seriously addressed. The model of citizen participation—where the local population benefits directly through cheaper electricity or financial investments—has shown in Germany and in initial Austrian projects that resistance can be significantly reduced if the added value remains locally anchored. Austria has laid the legal foundation for such models with the Electricity Industry Act (ElWG) and the extended Energy Community Rules; their widespread application to open-field solar projects could be key to overcoming the remaining societal obstacles.
In a global comparison of industrialized nations, Austria has a more developed renewable energy base than most countries, driven by its historical dominance of hydropower. This is a strength – but also a fallacy if it leads to underestimating the urgency of further expansion. Photovoltaics – and with it, ground-mounted solar parks – is not an option in Austria that can be chosen or not. It is a structural necessity, made unavoidable by the arithmetic of the energy balance.