Developing Solar, Transforming Land : the role of landowners in Sweden’s energy transition

Sammanfattning

As Sweden turns increasingly toward solar energy as a pathway for the renewable energy transition, ground-mounted solar parks are becoming a central feature in future energy projections. At the same time, the development of solar parks has sparked debate regarding the displacement of agricultural production, limitations in access to grid infrastructure, and disruptions to rural landscape aesthetics. At the heart of this transition are landowners, actors who decide whether to develop solar on their land, and shape how this is carried out in practice. This thesis explores how landowners in Sweden experience the development of ground-mounted solar parks on their land, while navigating the broader systemic constraints of ambiguity in policy and market conditions, and how these projects relate to agricultural practices and land-use management. Through semi-structured interviews with eight landowners and one key informant, this study identifies key motivations and opportunities for solar projects, such as financial viability and income generation, land-use optimization, and energy independence, while also uncovering challenges related to policy ambiguity, market volatility, and infrastructure constraints. A recurring theme is the different approaches to land management in the solar park. While some landowners use mowing for low-maintenance upkeep of vegetation in the solar park, others experiment with dual land-use models such as grazing or crop cultivation. This is creating a divergence between simplicity and innovation in such land maintenance strategies and reshaping the notion of land in solar parks as multifunctional. The findings suggest that landowner experiences with solar park development are shaped not only by national energy policy, market and land availability, but by context-specific factors such as when in time the solar park was built and under what conditions of the local land, experiences as farmers, coordination with their main operations, and the decision-making of landowners was impacted by their own characteristics and values. Drawing on frameworks from land system science, agricultural decision-making, and local energy transition theory, this thesis argues that understanding, including and drawing on landowner perspectives is crucial to creating a more resilient, long-term, multifunctional, and context-sensitive solar energy transition in Sweden.