Efficiency, Sustainability and Governance of Agrivoltaic Systems: A PRISMA-Based Systematic Review of Global Evidence (2010–2025)

Agrivoltaic systems integrate solar electricity generation with agricultural production on the same land and have emerged as a promising strategy to address land-use conflicts between food and energy systems. This PRISMA-based systematic review synthesizes evidence from 249 peer-reviewed studies published between 2010 and 2025, applying an integrated three-dimensional framework that simultaneously examines technical efficiency, environmental sustainability, and institutional governance. The results show that agrivoltaic systems consistently achieve superior land-use performance, with Land Equivalent Ratio values typically ranging between 1.2 and 1.8, indicating 20–80% greater territorial efficiency than separate agricultural and photovoltaic systems. In water-stressed regions, reported improvements in water-use efficiency commonly reach 15–30%, while life-cycle assessments indicate substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts. The integrated analysis also reveals important design-dependent trade-offs related to panel density, crop selection, and local agroclimatic conditions. Despite their demonstrated technical and environmental maturity, the large-scale deployment of agrivoltaic systems remains constrained by institutional barriers, including the lack of dedicated regulatory frameworks, fragmented agricultural and energy policies, and the strong geographical concentration of research in the Global North, with limited evidence from Latin America and other regions of the Global South. Overall, the findings indicate that agrivoltaic systems represent a credible component of integrated land-use and energy transition strategies, but their responsible scaling will depend primarily on advances in governance, policy alignment, and context-specific system design.