A Social Media Analysis of the Agrivoltaics Discourse in Japan

Japan’s first agrivoltaics project was built already 20 years ago and since then more than 4,300 projects have been implemented in all parts of the country. Nevertheless, it is still a niche technology and social acceptance is necessary to further advance agrivoltaics. Nowadays, information gathering and public opinion-making often take place on social media. Attitudes and social norms towards projects are formed online but social media is still often ignored by academia. To fill this gap, this study analyzed 21 months of Twitter data related to agrivoltaics in Japan. The results show an active discourse about agrivoltaics with an average of more than 1,000 tweets per month. The discourse is in majority supportive of agrivoltaics highlighting the potential to solve big societal problems in Japan, such as decarbonization and rural revitalization. Concerns are voiced regarding the potential negative impact on the already weak agricultural sector in Japan. Overall, a lack of reliable and evidence-based information in the discourse was noticeable. This should be addressed to avoid a shift to negative narratives based on misinformation which has already been the case in the solar photovoltaics discourse.