The Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) announced a $19 million investment from President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda to install solar panels over irrigation canals in California, Oregon and Utah.
Installing solar panels in irrigation canals has the potential to generate renewable energy, reduce evaporation losses, increase the efficiency of solar panels, create land savings, mitigate algae growth and decrease carbon emissions, the agency said. These projects aim to study water efficiency gains and clean energy production for future large-scale implementation.
“These projects will help inform similar projects to better understand their impacts and make that information publicly available so that we can all understand the scale and corresponding benefits they provide,” BOR Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton said in a statement.
