Solar farms are booming in the US and putting thousands of hungry sheep to work
The booming solar industry has found an unlikely mascot in sheep as large-scale solar farms crop up across the U.S. and in the fields of Texas. The fuzzy mammals are part of a growing trend of renewable energy meeting agriculture in a unique relationship to power the clean energy transformation. Sometimes called solar grazing, the industry puts sheep to work chewing the grass instead of using gas-powered lawnmowers beneath hundreds of thousands of solar panels. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory says agrivoltaics, a method using land for both solar energy production and agriculture, is on the rise with more than 60 solar grazing projects in the U.S.