Ministers hope to ban solar projects from most English farms
The new environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, is understood to oppose solar panels being placed on agricultural land, arguing that it impedes his programme of growth and boosting food production.
To this end, say government sources, he has asked his officials to redefine “best and most versatile” land (BMV), which is earmarked for farming, to include the middling-to-low category 3b.
Land is graded from 1 to 5, and currently BMV includes grades 1 to 3a. Planning guidance says that development on BMV land should be avoided, although planning authorities may take other considerations into account.
Currently, most solar farms are built on and planned for 3b land, so this move would scupper most new developments of the renewable energy source.
Extending BMV to grade 3b would ban solar from about 41 percent of the land area of England, or about 58 percent of agricultural land. Much of grade 4 and 5 land is in upland areas that are unsuitable for solar developments.
During her speech at the Conservative party conference last week, the prime minister, Liz Truss, reeled off a list of “enemies”, including green campaigners, who make up what she characterised as the “anti-growth coalition”. However, green campaigners say blocking the building of renewables would make her government part of such a group.
Chris Hewett, chief executive of the trade association Solar Energy UK, said:
“The UK solar sector is alarmed by attempts to put major planning rules in the way of cheap, homegrown energy.
Solar power is the answer to so many needs and policy demands: it will cut energy bills, deliver energy security, boost growth and help rural economies.
Ranil Jayawardena’s opposition to solar farms must surely make him part of the anti-growth coalition.”
To get this policy over the line, Defra would have to get signoff from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
It is understood that BEIS ministers are against the move, as they are trying to show that they are not only deregulating the oil and gas industry and fracking, but also renewable energy.
However, No 10 is understood to be sympathetic to the idea, with Truss having vowed to block solar farms on agricultural land during her election campaign.
Dustin Benton, policy director at the thinktank Green Alliance, said:
“It would be odd to redefine ‘best and most versatile’ agricultural land to include soils that aren’t of high quality, just to block solar farms. It sounds like a tactic that the ‘anti-growth coalition’ might employ.
The UK desperately needs to expand renewables so we don’t have to pay the extortionate cost of gas.
Solar is one of the fastest energy sources to be deployed, so we should move quickly to build more in light of the gas crisis.”
Andy Mayer, chief operation officer at the Institute of Economic Affairs thinktank, said:
“The government cannot on the one hand declare war on ‘the anti-growth coalition’, while on the other enforcing a right to veto developments, or waste time and money with excessive regulation.
Farmers and green entrepreneurs are itching to provide solutions to the false claim that energy and food security cannot coexist. The City of London is ready to fund them. Long-term solutions to grid congestion and storage are possible.
Market reform can provide a level-playing field for competition. Communities can benefit through more personal rewards from permitted development.
That is what a supply-side revolution to encourage growth while supporting a transition to a cleaner greener future looks like. Not rigid rules, plans and targets that confuse, contradict and encourage opposition to change.”
Ed Miliband, shadow secretary for climate change and net zero, said:
“If the government goes ahead with blocking solar energy, it will be yet more unilateral energy disarmament from a government that has a 12 year record of driving up bills by blocking clean power.
The blame for this plan lies squarely with the prime minister who has repeatedly opposed solar energy, the cheapest, cleanest, quickest form of power–and it will be the British people who pay the price in higher bills, higher gas imports and energy insecurity.”
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs refused to deny this change was on the cards, simply saying the government had been looking at options to support farming and economic growth while protecting nature and delivering on net zero.
See more here theguardian
Editor’s note: We are publishing this to show how biased The Guardian has become, and how much they seem to favour destroying both the British economy and the lives of its citizens by reducing energy availability and the food supply.
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Sunfacejack
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The people who want and can afford solar are most welcome to it. Sure is can make those less dependent on the Government, But when the sun doesn’t shine you need to pay for backup.
However to expect others to fund it for them are wrong. Expecting Government to subsidies it is the same thing. It stinks of entitlement.
Using arable land for solar is criminal,
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Howdy
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“Solar power is the answer to so many needs and policy demands: it will cut energy bills, deliver energy security, boost growth and help rural economies.”
This is the old promise that never came true. The fact it’s still pushed is surely a sign those that use it are out of touch, or fakers.
“If the government goes ahead with blocking solar energy, it will be yet more unilateral energy disarmament from a government that has a 12 year record of driving up bills by blocking clean power.”
Odd that my energy bills climb regurlarly despite ‘cheap’ renewables.
The cell materials are an ecological nightmare due to mining and emissions, and like any ‘sustainable source’, the planet itself must be destroyed in that pursuit. Still, what’s a little harm to the planet when comfort is needed?
“Liz Truss, reeled off a list of “enemies”, including green campaigners, who make up what she characterised as the “anti-growth coalition”. However, green campaigners say blocking the building of renewables would make her government part of such a group.”
Quite unusual for a minister to say something like that. The difference between Truss and the ‘greenies’, is that Truss’s words ring of truth.
“The UK solar sector is alarmed by attempts to put major planning rules in the way of cheap, homegrown energy.”
The UK has a burgeoning solar cell manufacturing industry? Who knew? Assembling panels cells sourced from the East is not home grown, nor cheap. Another load of tosh.
Have a look at this article:
https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-opportunities-of-solar-panel-recycling
I purposefully picked it because it comes from a ‘green’ source. Is it correct? The cell arrays are seemingly allmost completely recoverable to re-usable materials, yet the process appears energy intensive and expensive.
All this cleaner, greener future still needs gas sourced from below our feet in order to manufacture these things in the first place. Odd that fact gets left out all the time. Disposable of the unrecyclable materials are not mentioned. The devastation to the planet in the pursuit of, and disposal of, materials. In other words, planet consuming. That is not the definition of renewable.
This green future is one of a seething, toxic hell of buried filth, covered by a thin crust supporting a nirvana themed pipe dream.
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Left Coast
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No one ever mentions the Vast Amounts of ENERGY consumed to create these Toxic Solar Panels . . . why do you suppose that is?
How do we make green energy?
We start with coal, a whole lot of coal. 2.4 tons of quartz sand is needed to produce one ton of metallurgical-grade silicon (solar panels).
● 1212 lbs. of coal
● 441 lbs. of oil coke
● 1322 lbs. of charcoal
● 661 lbs. of woodchips
The Land these Solar Panels sit upon becomes useless for growing anything after a decade.
Making a solar electric panel produces more CO2 than the panel will ever save.
Norwegian physics Nobel Prize laureate Professor Ivar Giaever is one of the declaration’s signatories. He says that climate change dogmas are more religion than they are science – a full list of World Climate Declaration signatories is available here.
“The scale of the opposition to modern day ‘settled’ climate science is remarkable, given how difficult it is in academia to raise grants for any climate research that departs from the political orthodoxy,” reports Legal Insurrection.
“Another lead author of the declaration, Professor Richard Lindzen, has called the current climate narrative ‘absurd,’ but acknowledged that trillions of dollars and the relentless propaganda from grant-dependent academics and agenda-driven journalists currently says it is not absurd.”
Global warming is about as real as the Easter bunny.
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