June 11, 2026

Last week’s Sunday newspaper carried a USA Today article on an innovative integration of ranching and energy production.  A herd of ten cows and their calves are residents of a Christiana, Tennessee, solar farm.  The 40-acre (16 ha) farm is the world’s only commercial scale solar energy plant co-located with cattle production.  The farm is owned by Silicon Ranch, a 15-year-old company based in Nashville.  The group has big plans to foster the integration of cattle and solar energy production thanks to a patented technology they are case testing in Tennessee.  The company, and its team of interdisciplinary researchers who built the technology, believes the co-location of the two land uses is a win-win for the agriculture and energy sectors.  This promise comes as both sectors have been forced to navigate unpredictable and sometimes volatile market conditions over the past few years. The software is called CattleTracker and offers a simple yet scalable solution to the venture.

When I went online, I found that CattleTracker “is a field-tested, evidence-based solution built to scale across America’s agricultural landscape that won the 2026 SEAL Sustainable Innovation Award.”  The innovation is the culmination of research and development by a multidisciplinary team of experts in the practice of using the same land for both solar energy and agriculture (agrivoltaics), animal welfare scientists, regenerative ranchers, and soil and ecosystem scientists from across the country and around the world.  The ranch builds and expands on Silicon Ranch’s nationally recognized work in sheep grazing, but the process needed innovation to adapt as solar panels can be vulnerable to damage from the greater weight and height of grazing cows versus compact sheep.  The living laboratory at Christiana will enable researchers to study cattle behavior, welfare, and ecological impacts while simultaneously testing solar installation structures.  According to Silicon Ranch’s website, “Christiana Solar is the latest proof that energy production and farming don’t have to compete—they actually work hand in hand, thriving together.”

Silicon Ranch launched its Regenerative Energy platform in 2018, introducing sheep grazing to its solar farms first in Tennessee and then in other locations.  Now, the company owns the largest flock of sheep in Georgia.  However, sheep are small and docile and easily coexist with solar modules.  Cattle are large and heavy and do not fit under standard solar modules, and they tend to bump into things which could damage the expensive equipment.  The advantage of making the cattle and solar modules work together is that the animals benefit from plentiful shade and grass to freely graze while the power companies have an easier time maintaining their solar farm.  Solar modules work by rotating, tilting the panels to follow the sun’s movements throughout the day and can be almost vertical.  Prohibitive costs of materials keep from just raising the modules above the cattle.  The CattleTracker software is designed to prevent modules from tracking the sun if cattle are nearby.  Nick de Vries, of Silicon Ranch, said ”We needed a design that would be good for agriculture, good for solar, good for the ecology, good for the community.”  Silicon plans to continue to improve the CattleTracker technology to show how it could be used in communities across the U.S.

THOUGHTS: The locally produced CattleTracker technology carries over to all the solar equipment at the facility.  The solar modules were made in Ohio by American company First Solar, while other parts were made in Alabama, Wisconsin and Virginia.  The Nextpower tracker parts were made in Memphis, and the Shoals combiner boxes were made in Portland, Tennessee.  The project illustrates that with innovation you can shop locally and focus on both the economy and ecology.  Who knew.  Act for all.  Change will come and it starts with you.

December 23, 2024

Ariana Gomez for The New York Times

Back in 2022 I blogged on growing battle surrounding carbon recapture in the US’s Mississippi River Chemical Corridor, commonly known as Cancer Alley. While critics acknowledged the process worked, they objected to the pollution caused by the facility itself, and the energy required to power the equipment. Today, my NY Times feed reported that more than 2 years later over 1,000 big companies have pledged to eliminate their carbon emissions over the next few decades, and part of those efforts came from paying for carbon dioxide removal. During 2024, Microsoft, Google, and British Airways were among the companies that committed a total of US$1.6 billion to purchase carbon removal credits. This is up from less than US$1 million in 2019, and it is believed this will grow to US$10 billion during 2025, and reach US$1.2 trillion by 2050. While huge sums of money are being dedicated to the emerging field, these projects will not have a meaningful effect on global temperatures anytime soon. There are only a few dozen operational facilities today that capture only a trace of carbon emissions. It is estimated that if 100’s of more such plants were built it would only recapture about 1% of the worlds annual carbon dioxide emissions.

When I looked online, I found that while there are several ideas for geoengineering plans and technologies designed to cool the planet, carbon dioxide recapture is attracting the big money. Investors believe while this will have a negligible short term impact on temperatures, it will begin to make a difference as emissions fall and the technology becomes more powerful. While some carbon polluters have committed to reducing carbon emissions, more are opting to continue to pollute and instead paying for carbon recapture credits. The US government is supporting the recapture movement through the Inflation Reduction Act that has tripled tax credits for capture and storage of carbon directly from the atmosphere. This 2021 bipartisan bill included US$3.5 billion to build four demonstration projects.

Pulling greenhouse gases out of the air is expensive and currently costs as much as US$1,000 per ton to capture and sequester carbon dioxide. Analysts say the price would need to drop to US$100 a ton for the industry to be viable. Damien Steel, chief executive of the carbon recapture firm Deep Sky, says, “This isn’t a market. A market means liquidity, repeatability, standards. We have none of that here.” As the NY Times reported, the industry is still creating a form of gold rush as investors readily fund new companies hoping that some of their bets will pay off. Many scientists and activists say the most effective way to combat global warming is to rapidly phase out oil, gas, and coal, as it is the burning of these fossil fuels which heat the planet. Former Vice President Al Gore, co-founder of Climate Trace, said, “We need to obey the first law of holes. When you’re in one, stop digging.”

THOUGHTS: Carbon recapture is only the latest technological innovation humans employed to try and resolve a problem of our own making. As an archaeologist the irony was not lost on me that I was digging through the trash dumps that the next culture had buried as they created a new living space on the remains of the past. When the pollution became too great, people would move to the next pristine site and begin again. The problem now is the pristine places are diminishing, and the polluted locations are broadening. This is particularly evident as our land, water, sea, and air are polluted on a globalized scale. If we do not “stop digging” our holes, the earth will be left for the next interplanetary archaeologists to dig. Act for all. Change is coming and it starts with you.