Large-scale Solar Farms

Debate between Caroline Johnson and Martin Vickers

Thursday 18th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dr Johnson]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend; in fact, he must have read my speech in advance, because my next point is that it is questionable to what extent solar is the most appropriate source of renewable energy. In the UK, solar generates maximum power for an average of only 2.6 hours per day, which falls to less than one hour per day during winter, the time of year when energy is most needed—in practice, we are most likely to need energy when it is dark and cold rather than when it is sunny and there is bright daylight.

In addition, battery storage is carbon-intensive and requires rare earth metals, as my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) has pointed out previously. There is an issue of land-use efficiency here. Currently, 2,000 acres of solar panels are required to power around 50,000 homes, but one small modular reactor, requiring the space of just two football pitches, would power 1 million homes.

To go back to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) about wind, a 140-acre solar project is capable of supplying electricity to 9,000 homes, but offshore wind turbines generate maximum power for an average of 9.4 hours each day, and just one turbine in the North sea has the capacity to power 16,000 homes, largely without bothering a single person or destroying any of our best and most versatile land.

The previous debate that I secured on this issue, in June last year, focused on planning regulations, and I do not plan to go into that subject in huge detail again today. To give the Government credit, since then they have clearly tried to get to grips with the issue, and they released a new national policy statement on renewable energy infrastructure in January. Nevertheless, I fear there is still a loophole in the regulations. The cumulative impact of solar applications is not properly defined, and the regulations are still characterised not by strict rules but by guidance, which can be flouted. Many planners still utterly ignore the guidance to avoid the use of the best and most versatile land. Half of the Heckington Fen project in my constituency would be on the best and most versatile land and—horrifyingly—it is proposed that 94% of the Drax project in east Yorkshire will swallow up BMV land.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Thankfully, in the northern part of Lincolnshire that I represent, we have been fairly free of solar farms, but applications have recently flooded in following some developments in the Immingham and Stallingborough area. When the planning guidance is read to local authorities, it could be interpreted much more robustly by those planning authorities than it is at present. Allowing for the fact that they interpret it rather loosely, I urge the Minister when he responds to confirm that the Government are prepared to tighten up the guidance to local authorities.

[Dr Johnson]

I agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for supporting my calls for the Minister to ensure that the guidance is tightened up to protect our farmland. It is clear that developers are taking advantage of the absence of rigid and specific Government guidance to protect BMV land and proposing ever larger solar installations as NSIPs in unsuitable places. As one developer commented:

“That’s the neat thing about the NSIP process. You put all the powers you need into one consent and have relative certainty”

—certainly in their view—

“of the consent being granted.”

Although the upgrade of substations within the electrical network is intended to be a positive thing that enhances local infrastructure, in my area it has inadvertently attracted speculators looking to profit from the farmland. When substations undergo upgrades, a cluster of large solar applications tends to emerge nearby. The approach is cheaper for companies seeking to complete solar projects, but it does not mean they are being built in the right places. Unfortunately, the consequence is a shift from a few small, unobtrusive solar panels on brownfield sites, and smaller amounts on poor-quality farmland and fields here and there, to massive industrial installations in completely the wrong places based merely on grid connection. Such industrial projects significantly alter the landscape, sometimes entirely swallowing whole villages, transforming once green fields into sterile expanses of photovoltaic glass. The companies have no ties to the land and no stake in its preservation.

One issue that I have raised with the Minister previously —it was brought up by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell)—is that developers are having the land grades analysed themselves. They appear to be finding that the land is of lower grade than DEFRA and others thought it was.