Carrie Segil is the People and Culture Manager at The Nature Conservancy in Colorado, and Duncan Gilchrist is a Climate and Natural Resources Policy Associate at The Nature Conservancy in Colorado. Both Carrie and Duncan are deeply involved with TNC Colorado’s Catalyst Fund, a cutting-edge conservation funding initiative that supports forward-looking projects that enable innovation and rapid learning, both to test new ideas and to build greater capacity for innovation over the long term.

One of the Catalyst Fund’s most notable projects involves agrivoltaics, which is the simultaneous use of land for both solar energy production and agriculture. The project is called the Agrivoltaics Retrofit Partnership, and it’s a Boulder-based partnership between TNC, Jack’s Solar Garden, Drylands Agroecology Research, Boulder Housing Partners, and a conservation-justice / community outreach partner called FLOWS. The project aims to achieve multiple conservation and community objectives, including restoring degraded land, producing perennial plants with medicinal, economic, and indigenous cultural value, and providing a host of benefits to local marginalized community members– benefits that we discuss in this episode.

In this episode, we talk in detail about this specific agrivoltaics project, as well as some of the other innovative projects that are being pushed forward thanks to support from the Catalyst Fund. We discussed how and why TNC Colorado decided to create the Catalyst Fund in the first place, and the need to push boundaries and take risks in the conservation space. Carrie offers insights into specific Catalyst projects, such as virtual fencing for bison, and Duncan discusses all the details about this agrivoltaics project– including the genesis of the idea, the challenges of the projects, and why it has proven to be so successful and replicable. We also discuss how policy on the state and federal level is creating more opportunities for agrivoltaics, why it garners bipartisan support, and lessons learned from all of the Catalyst Fund projects.

I was so impressed with Carrie and Duncan’s enthusiasm, professionalism, and commitment to innovation, and I learned so much from this conversation. Be sure to check out the episode notes to learn more about everything we discussed, and please share this episode with any friends or colleagues who might find it valuable. Thanks so much for listening, I hope you enjoy!

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Full episode notes and links: https://mountainandprairie.com/catalyst/

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This episode is brought to you in partnership with the Colorado chapter of The Nature Conservancy. Guided by science and grounded by decades of collaborative partnerships, The Nature Conservancy has a long-standing legacy of achieving lasting results to create a world where nature and people thrive.

On the fourth Tuesday of every month throughout 2023, Mountain & Prairie will be delving into conversations with a wide range of The Nature Conservancy’s leaders, partners, collaborators, and stakeholders, highlighting the myriad of conservation challenges, opportunities, and solutions here in the American West.

To learn more about The Nature Conservancy’s impactful work in Colorado and around the world, visit www.nature.org/colorado

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TOPICS DISCUSSED:

3:30 - An overview of the Catalyst Fund
7:00 - Talking to funders about the Catalyst Fund
8:45 - How TNC evaluates what it is looking for regarding the Catalyst Fund
10:30 - Duncan’s agrivoltaics project
12:45 - Duncan’s job before his agrivoltaics project
14:45 - More on Duncan’s project and his site
19:00 - About Boulder Housing Partners, and how they reacted to Duncan’s idea
20:30 - How Duncan worked to turn the rocky land he is working into agricultural land
22:30 - The outlook for Duncan’s project, and how it stacks up against his expectations
25:00 - The federal and state (CO) push for more projects like Duncan’s
28:00 - Why agrivoltaics seems to garner bipartisan support
29:30 - Why everyone isn’t doing agrivoltaics
31:30 - The potential for grazing under agrivoltaics
32:30 - Other synergies between solar energy and agriculture
33:30 - Carrie’s outlook on Duncan’s project, and some other projects funded by the Catalyst Fund
36:45 - What it’s like for TNC to work with external partners
37:45 - Other projects funded through the Catalyst Funds
40:00 - Big lessons from the Catalyst Fund project
45:00 - The power of advocating for policy
47:15 - Where the Catalyst Fund is going
51:00 - Carrie and Duncan’s book recommendations
53:45 - Closing thoughts

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