“Credible external estimates suggest that ground-mounted solar used just 0.1 percent of our land in 2022” Mr Miliband told the House of Commons yesterday (18th July). “The biggest threat to nature and food security and to our rural communities is not solar panels or onshore wind; it is the climate crisis, which threatens our best farmland, food production and the livelihoods of farmers. The Government will proceed not on the basis of myth and false information, but on evidence.”
Mr Miliband added that his recent decision to approve three large-scale solar projects was supported by the National Farmers’ Union (NFU).
Solar Energy UK has published a number of briefings on agricultural land and site selection for solar farms, supplemented by a position statement on archaeological remains, aimed at answering questions such as how locations are chosen, to what extent solar farms disturb the ground and what evidence is available that solar farms pose no threat to national food security. Further factsheets on biodiversity and battery energy storage systems will follow.
Produced with the assistance of Dr Jonathan Scurlock, NFU Chief Adviser on Renewable Energy and Climate Change, the factsheet on agricultural land use stresses that solar farms “do not in any way present a risk to the UK’s food security,” contrary to false and misleading claims in the media and even expressed in parliament.
To hammer home the message, NFU President Tom Bradshaw backed the solar sector and condemned “sensationalist” claims about food security. “It’s a small amount of land which is being taken out of production," he told the political magazine Politico.
Rather than being a threat, the factsheet on food security argues that solar farms bolster food security by addressing climate change.
As the UK Government’s 2021 Food Security Report said: “The biggest medium to long term risk to the UK’s domestic production comes from climate change and other environmental pressures like soil degradation, water quality and biodiversity.” Under a medium emissions scenario, it projected that the amount of top-grade ‘best and most versatile’ (BMV) category farmland would fall by 70 percent by 2050 – vast compared to the small amount of land expected to be used for solar generation.
“Solar farms are keeping UK farmers in business while producing some of the cheapest power there has ever been” said Chris Hewett, Chief Executive of Solar Energy UK. “Without them, energy bills would be even higher – for farms just as much as homes. Solar farms can provide reliable revenue, helping to keep UK farms profitable and securing domestic food supplies.”
Mr Miliband was correct to say that only a thousandth of the UK’s land is taken up by solar farms, with golf courses occupying more UK’s solar farms. Expectations are that this will rise by a few tenths of a percentage point by 2050. In return, the country would have a cheaper, greener electricity system, more secured from the impact of geopolitical shocks, and with manifold benefits to biodiversity, also.
“Solar farms offer an attractive diversification income opportunity for farmers when we strike the right balance between food security and climate ambitions” added Dr Scurlock. “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.”
The factsheets are aimed particularly at MPs, planning officials and local councillors. They aim to promote understanding, confidence and consistency in how planning authorities consider solar farm planning applications.
As the factsheet on agricultural land notes, there is no policy requiring owners of good-quality farmland to use it solely for growing food or non-food crops such as for biofuels. “On this basis, food security does not have material weight in the determination of a planning application,” it adds.
Instead, planning policy seeks to direct planned solar farms away from such land, towards that which is of lesser quality or has been developed previously. However, given the series of constraints that apply to locating them, delivering on this objective is not always practical.
The two factsheets supplement previous briefings from Solar Energy UK on agricultural land use and food security.
Unlike virtually every other form of development, solar farms have almost negligible potential to harm the country’s valued archaeological heritage. The area of land disturbed is typically less than 2 percent of the total site area, most of which is access track. Moreover, panels are typically supported by pile footings that take up no more than six square metres per hectare, or 0.06 percent of the total area, in an “absolute worst case scenario” says the position statement.
Even where there is the risk of disturbing susceptible assets, this can be mitigated by using ballast rather than pilings to secure mounting systems.
Despite this, mandated field evaluations for archaeology are often disproportionate, requiring expensive and potentially damaging trenching even before applications are even considered. According to the statement, such requirements should be “kept to the absolute minimum”, not least due to trenching’s environmental impacts.
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