Background
Our Uncertain Future
Climate change, energy and food security, land-use and biodiversity all create challenges we have not faced before. In solving any one of these problems we must make sure we do not make the other ones worse.
Climate Change and Net Zero
The threat of climate change drives the current ambition for Net Zero carbon emissions of all of our energy requirements by 2050. This 2023 review outlines some of the options, but concludes “There is no clear roadmap for the deployment of solar, even though solar capacity is expected to grow fivefold in the period to 2030.”
Energy Security
This March 2023 document recommends that large-area solar installations should follow Government guidelines that recommend avoiding good-quality farmland. But are these guidelines being followed? SolarQ’s research shows that they are not.
Food Security
The UK currently imports almost half the food we eat. Our ability to grow our own food is predicted to decrease as a result of climate change. Other countries are equally likely to be affected by climate change. In future will they be able to supply us with the food we need? If not, shouldn’t we plan to grow much more of our own food? It seems bizarre to plan for self-sufficiency in energy while ignoring self-sufficiency in food.
Land Use
Our over-crowded island desperately needs a strategic approach to land-use and planning. Following a 2023 House of Lords’ Committee report on Land Use in England, the Government (DEFRA) was on the brink of releasing a (long-delayed) Land-Use Framework in early 2024 when the General Election was called. Consultees and interest groups had made suggestions to the House of Lords’ Committee, and these three (in the picture on the right) from the solar industry are requests to change restrictions uniquely to the advantage of solar. Does society as a whole gain from such special-interest pleading?
The Land Use Framework is still awaited.
(ELMS is the UK Environmental Land Management Scheme that replaces the EU Basic Payments Scheme, BPS. It pays farmers to improve the environment and biodiversity of their farms. Solar installations are specifically excluded from ELMS.)
Biodiversity
The UK’s 2021 Environment Act requires a minimum of 10% Biodiversity Net Gain for all future developments. This requires the application of DEFRA’s biodiversity metric calculation in which developers identify the extent of each land-cover type (each with a different metric score) both before and after the development has taken place. The overall metric score after development must be at least 10% greater than the score before development. There are more than 130 defined land-cover types in the metric spreadsheet but none involves solar panels (e.g. ‘solar panels over previous pasture-land’) so the metric cannot be applied to ground-mounted solar installations. Developers claim very high increases in biodiversity for proposed solar farms, but the basis for doing so is not clear. A doubling of hedgerow length, for example, by planting extra hedgerows, will not double biodiversity if the original hedgerow has been there for decades or centuries.