Solar Farms and Food Production
Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Lord Krebs(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
First, I reassure the noble Lord that estimates suggest that ground-mounted solar used just over 0.1% of land in 2022, and we expect any future rollout to take up a very small amount of agricultural land. The large solar farms that I have information about are not on any grade 1 or grade 2 agricultural land, as far as I am aware. However, the noble Lord makes the very important point that the land use framework will be critical in how we manage what our land is used for. Is it used for energy, housing or farming, and so on? We expect the Green Paper to be published for consultation in the new year and I urge all noble Lords to read it and take part in the consultation.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, the Minister referred to the long-awaited land use framework, which she helpfully announced is due to be published in the new year. I would like to ask whether, at the same time, her department has considered what skills and data will be required to use the land use framework to inform decisions such as the one that is being debated in this Oral Question?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
As part of the consultation and the development of the land use framework, we are intending to engage with a very broad range of respondents in order to have meaningful co-design, and resources absolutely have to be part of that.
Waste: Incineration
Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Lord Krebs(3 months ago)
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
As I just mentioned, we are looking to do a review right across the piece on this, so anaerobic waste will certainly be part of that.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, it is all very well to incinerate waste, but does the Minister agree that a real priority should be to reduce the amount of waste that we produce as a country? The real way to deal with this problem is just to produce less waste.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
It is a really important point that the noble Lord makes. If we are moving to a more circular economy, as this Government want, we have to see less residual waste being generated —in fact, less waste as a whole. There is a statutory target to effectively halve residual waste by 2042 from 2019 levels, but there still will be an estimated 17.6 million tonnes of residual waste to manage in 2042. Therefore, we have to look at the bigger picture. How do we actually reduce waste overall?