It's not right, but we do it. Exploring why and how Czech farmers become renewable energy producers

The paper provides empirical evidence on emerging on-farm renewable energy enterprises in a post-communist space, namely in the Czech Republic. In addition to exploring farmers' individual motivations to adopt activities related to renewable energy production (biofuel crops growing, biomass production, operation of anaerobic digestion (AD) plants, and implementation of solar and wind energy projects), the study focuses on analysing regional and inter-firm variances in the level and types of adopted activities. A considerable discrepancy between stated personal attitudes of farmers (supporting the traditional view that farmers should only produce food) and actual practice of farms (dealing with renewable energy production for economic reasons) was detected. The extent and types of energy activities proved to be influenced both by geographical conditions and types of farm. While there are significant differences between the studied districts with different climatic and geographic conditions in the type and extent of energy crops and biomass cultivation, the expansion of AD plants and solar power systems was observed the same in both areas. The adoption of energy activities is positively correlated with company size and area of cultivated land, and negatively correlated with the degree of focus on livestock production. While growing biofuel crops is typical for large and medium-sized enterprises, individual farmers and small enterprises with less land area are more likely to produce biomass for combustion and use own grounds and roofs for implementing solar systems. Finally, the most common four types of currently adopted multipath renewable energy enterprises were identified.