News
Press releases, awards, and media coverage of the lab’s work, most recent first.
2026
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Press release
Solar expansion won’t threaten food prices or security
Even if 40% of new U.S. solar farms go on cropland, prices of major crops would rise by less than 5.6%.
2025
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Media
What will floating solar mean for wildlife?
Simone Cardoso explains that panel shading can ripple through aquatic food webs, and that the lab’s shading experiments are testing how much cover is too much.
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Press release
Lab-hosted workgroup charts a path to greener hydropower
Turbine upgrades and floating solar on reservoirs could boost hydropower output without new dams in sensitive river basins.
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Media
Floating solar and the “green grab” for land
Rafael Almeida explains that panels can shade out aquatic plants and slow the winds that mix water, and that the environmental trade-offs of floating solar remain unclear.
2024
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Press release
Floating solar can offset the carbon footprint of high-emitting hydropower
Covering some reservoirs with solar panels could cancel out their greenhouse gas emissions without using any extra land.
2023
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Media
Rafael Almeida talks agrivoltaics with KRGV News
Solar panels and crops sharing the same land could benefit South Texas farmers.
2022
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Grant
$2.2M USDA grant to test agrivoltaics with underserved producers
The four-year VANGUARD project brings solar-plus-agriculture to South Texas farms and measures its greenhouse gas and environmental benefits.
UTRGV Newsroom · Panel with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
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Media
Floating solar research featured in Engineering and Eos
Solar panels on reservoirs could help fight climate change while sparing land.
2021
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Award
Rafael Almeida receives the Hynes Award for New Investigators
The Society for Freshwater Science honored work showing that low-carbon Amazon hydropower depends on choosing dam sites strategically.
Society for Freshwater Science · Nature Communications paper
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Media
Climate change threatens future Amazon hydropower
Drier rivers could undermine the electricity output and economic case for new Amazon dams.
2020
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Media
The New York Times maps Amazon dams using the lab’s database
An infographic on threats to the Amazon draws on hundreds of hydropower dams compiled in a Nature Communications study.