Perhaps Labour’s biggest contribution to the solar industry in the UK (so far) has been the change in messaging about solar developments.
Despite only being elected in July, the new government has delivered on the industry’s pre-election demands: the three solar nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs) that had been awaiting the secretary of state’s approval received development consent orders (DCOs) and consultation on changes to the national planning policy framework (NPPF) is underway.
Changes would see the boundary for what is classed as an NSIP pushed up to 150MW from 50MW, with the intention of speeding up the rollout of larger solar developments in the UK. Trade body Solar Energy UK said it remains cautious about changing the 50MW threshold.
“The industry will consider the proposals and to what extent they would accelerate solar deployment in the next decade, which is the outcome we all want to see,” it said.
What was more unanimously welcomed was the proposed re-phrasing used in the NPPF. The proposed amendments say that local authorities “should support planning applications for all forms of renewable and low carbon development”, giving “significant weight… to renewable energy generation and a net zero future.”
A further change would recognise that “even small-scale and community-led projects provide a valuable contribution to renewable energy generation and a net zero future”. Prominently, the changes could also see the NPPF state the grade of agricultural land that may be used for solar development “should not be a predominating factor” in determining applications.
The current NPPF refers to the consideration of agricultural land for food production. Local planning authorities have used this to refuse planning permission for solar farms.
The EN-3 document that governs applications for NSIPs defines renewable energy generation as “critical national policy” infrastructure, stating that “national security, economic, commercial and net zero benefits” tend to outweigh any impacts.
On hearing the news, Solar Energy UK chief executive Chris Hewett said: “The industry will be glad to see the back of this provision in the NPPF, which was used a pretext for planning refusals. As Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said recently, solar farms do not pose a threat to the nation’s food security – and never will.”
‘Myth and false information’ out of parliament
Ed Miliband, newly-appointed Secretary of State for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), slammed the idea that solar farms are a threat to food security in the Commons on 18 July, citing estimates that ground-mounted solar took up 0.1% of UK land in 2022
He said that from here on out, the government will proceed “not on the basis of myth and false information, but on evidence”.
This was particularly prescient in the wake of the Conservative government’s messaging around solar developments: a small but vocal minority of backbench MPs, parish councils and neighbours to prospective solar farms opposed new developments on the grounds that they result in the loss of productive agricultural land.
They argued that farmland should be used for food production. Pandering to this or, as Chris Hewett wrote in a blog post for Solar Power Portal, targeting some “die-hard NIMBY votes from the very narrow electorate that selects the leader of their party”, when Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss fought for party leadership the solar debate became a bargaining chip.
At a hustings on 1 August 2022, Sunak highlighted a number of challenges Britain is facing currently. This included making sure Westminster understands the needs of rural communities, he said, which meant “making sure our fields are used for food production and not solar panels.”
Similarly, Truss said, “Our fields should be full of our fantastic produce … they shouldn’t be full of solar panels.” At another hustings soon after, Truss again suggested solar farms negatively impacted food security.
“I’m somebody who wants to see farmers producing food, not filling in forms, not doing red tape, not filling fields with paraphernalia like solar farms. What we want is crops, and we want livestock,”
Following Liz Truss’s short-lived stint as prime minister of the UK, Sunak’s administration rejected the prospect of an effective ban put forward under its predecessor, which, during the 49 days of its premiership, floated extending planning protections for high-grade farmland to moderate quality ‘3b’ land.
Solar farms and farming
Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is not so detrimental to farming as some believe. Solar farms disturb less than 2% of the underlying land and are completely reversible. They can be removed quickly and the land returned to food production at the end of their life. The land will have benefited from a break in intensive cultivation, improved soil health and increased carbon sequestration.
Solar farms are ideal for multifunctional land use. They can produce clean energy, provide livestock grazing, typically for sheep, sometimes chickens and geese – so much so that agrivoltaics, the use of land for solar and livestock farming, has become an industry in its own right.
In the past, moves to promote the biodiversity benefits of solar have been occasionally met with scepticism from planners and communities about how much could really be accomplished. Yet, multiple studies have time and again shown solar farms deliver significant biodiversity gains and have the potential to offer even more.
Further, the addition of solar PV can provide a (much-needed) revenue stream for farmers. The National Farmers’ Union of Scotland (NFUS) signed an affinity deal with Iqony Solar Energy Solutions (SENS), that sees landowners receive an indexed, competitive market rent for up to 40 years.
The deal further states that NFUS, which represents more than 9,000 farming and crofting businesses, will use its knowledge and member relationships to identify sites suitable for PV technology and battery projects. SENS will develop the sites and take long-term ownership.
More recently, NFU president Tom Bradshaw backed the solar sector, saying “it is a small amount of land which is being taken out of production”.
He added: “Solar farms offer an attractive diversification income opportunity for farmers when we strike the right balance between food security and climate ambitions. National planning guidance and NFU policy both express a preference for large scale solar farm development to be located as far as possible on lower quality agricultural land, avoiding the most productive and versatile soils.”
Dr Jonathan Scurlock, NFU chief adviser on renewable energy and climate change, assisted Solar Energy UK’s recently released factsheets dispelling common arguments made against new solar developments.
The factsheets are aimed particularly at MPs, with Solar Energy UK setting the intention to “promote understanding, confidence and consistency in how planning authorities consider solar farm planning applications”.
A similar debate is currently playing out in Italy, as covered by our sister site PV Tech. Earlier this month, the agriculture minister, Francesco Lollobrigida, announced a plan to “put an end to the wild installation of ground-mounted photovoltaics” on land classified as agricultural land.
Italy’s solar trade body, Italia Solare, warned that it could cost Italy €60 billion (US$65 billion) in lost tax revenues and private investment that could have been generated by the projects likely to be banned.
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