The Energy-Agriculture Nexus: A Multi-Year Research and Policy Agenda

Summary

The simultaneous emergence of three key factors has brought the energy–agriculture interrelationship into sharp focus. Firstly, geopolitical shocks such as the post-2022 fertilizer and energy crises, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and reinforced by 2026 disruptions at the Strait of Hormuz, demonstrated what nexus scholars have long argued: energy and agriculture are not adjacent sectors but functionally interlocked, with shocks in one propagating through the other in days, not years (Brouwer, 2022; Endo et al., 2017; Hoff, 2011; Newell et al., 2019).

Secondly, across the two sectors, mature, deployable technologies are emerging: for example, agrivoltaic systems delivering up to 200% land-use efficiency gains and 14% irrigation reductions in field trials (Pandey et al., 2025; Barron-Gafford et al., 2025), and solar irrigation pumps reducing emissions by 95–98% relative to diesel equivalents (FAO Land and Water Division, 2018). Technical feasibility is no longer the main bottleneck for the energy transition; governance and finance are.

Thirdly, energy and agriculture policy regimes have historically evolved in isolation, generating fragmented incentives and overlapping mandates that are intensifying frictions. The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy directed approximately EUR 100 billion in 2014–2020 climate spending without measurable progress on agricultural emissions (European Court of Auditors, 2021), while the US Renewable Fuel Standard expanded corn cultivation by 2.8 million hectares and produced a corn-ethanol carbon intensity at least 24% higher than gasoline when considering land-use change (Lark et al., 2022). Instruments are proliferating while their alignment is not.

Against this background, this working paper adopts a bidirectional value-chain framing in which agriculture functions simultaneously as an energy consumer and an energy producer, across upstream agrichemicals (IEA, 2021a; Vos et al., 2025; World Bank, 2023), midstream on-farm irrigation and mechanization (Qin et al., 2024), and downstream off-farm processing and cold storage (Crippa et al., 2021), through to producer pathways including bioenergy and agrivoltaics (IEA, 2025a; Pandey et al., 2025).

Five thematic areas are developed under this framing: Themes 1–3 address the value-chain spine from upstream through to producer pathways, and Themes 4–5 examine the cross-cutting architecture of climate finance, MRV, and policy coherence. Two analytical dimensions cut across all themes: the divergence between Global North and Global South policy responses, and the friction between non-aligned policy instruments operating at different points along the value chain. The paper does not address agriculture’s direct (non-energy) greenhouse gas emissions, such as enteric methane, manure-based N₂O, except where these are structurally tied to the energy–agriculture nexus. The objective is not to deliver a final synthesis but to anchor a multi-year research agenda capable of generating policy-relevant scholarship at this intersection.

Thabo Lenneiye

Managing Director, Goldsmith Sustainable Agriculture Fund

Thabo Lenneiye is the managing director of the Sustainable Agriculture Fund. She’s responsible for operationalizing the fund, launching initiatives focused on sustainable agriculture, and framing a research agenda that intersects with energy policy.

Angela Pachon

International Program Director

Angela Pachon is the international program director at the Kleinman Center, in charge of designing and overseeing international programs and teaching. She was previously the Center’s research director.

Shubham Love

Sustainable Agriculture Fund Research Assistant

Shubham Love is a a research assistant with the Sustainable Agriculture Fund at the Kleinman Center. He is a graduate student specializing in environmental policy.