Ground-mounted Solar Panels: Alternatives

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Bool]

I entirely agree, and we have been trying to promote that argument. It has unfortunately been claimed that Northamptonshire could become the warehousing capital of the UK, but we should be using the roadsides. We sometimes see airports using the side banks for solar panels. Solar panels should be installed on the covers of petrol stations and on the roofs of warehouses. I know that the last Government were consulting on whether more warehouse space could be used. I know that some people make technical arguments that the roofs are not strong enough and cannot be reinforced, but that is absolute nonsense. We can definitely work to ensure that the roofs are sturdy enough for solar panels.

There is debate about whether it should be the landlord or the tenant who bears the cost of the initial outlay, and about who gets the benefit. All those things are completely surmountable, and we should be able to work on a programme for that going forward. It all goes back to planning, because meaningful requirements could enable solar power generation. I am often concerned that these initiatives end up just being greenwashing and that we are only putting them in place to be able to tick a box. What we want to see is these schemes being meaningfully integrated.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a great speech about the importance of thinking about things strategically. Does she agree that if one was thinking about the strategic placement of ground-mounted solar, one would not put it on the best and most versatile farmland that we have for food security?

[Sarah Bool]

Absolutely. It certainly should not be put there, and the national planning policy framework states we should not be doing that. I therefore find it quite extraordinary that we are still having debates on this issue. There are certainly other alternatives, and they must be explored, so I really do hope that the Government take this issue seriously as it progresses over the years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Bool]

I thank my fellow member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for making those points. Yes, all the different incentives matter. In the farming environment, our farmers have struggled with a lack of certainty. With the removal of the sustainable farming incentive and with the capping and closure of all the different funds, there has been no certainty. In an industry that requires certainty, they cannot just suddenly change a crop halfway through. They have to rely on security, and it has not been delivered so far. We need to do whatever we can to put in place long-term guarantees of funding and make sure that they realise that they are secure for the future.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

My hon. Friend is being exceptionally generous with her time. Does she have any comment on the scale of some of these proposals? My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) talked about an 8,000-acre proposal, and 9,340 acres are currently open to planning in my area. It can be quite difficult to appreciate quite how big that is, so for the Minister’s benefit let me say that the constituency of Rutherglen stands at a total of 10,230 acres. That means that the solar farms planned in my constituency would cover 91% of his area.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. Two hon. Members have intervened after coming late to the debate. As a courtesy to the Chair and Members, they really should send a note. I have had a note from another hon. Member who wishes to intervene, who has done things properly and has not yet intervened. I say that to hon. Members for this debate and for future reference.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Shanks]

I was going to come to the trading of statistics later in my speech, but let me do it now, because there is a fundamental point around the disingenuous trading of statistics on land use. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) made a valiant effort at trying to correct that, but let me give Members some sense of this. At the end of 2024, ground-mounted solar panels covered an estimated 0.1% of the total land area of the UK. Even if we achieve the ambitious targets that we have set out in the clean power action plan, they will be expected to cover 0.4% of the total land area and 0.6% of agricultural land. That is if we achieve our hugely ambitious targets.

The arguments that I will make in this speech are exactly those that the previous Government made when they spoke from the Dispatch Box. There was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Energy Minister who spoke about the dramatic rise in global energy prices following the invasion of Ukraine, the urgency of building a renewables-based system, and how critical it is for us to meet our 70 GW target for solar in the UK by 2025— the previous Government’s target was a fivefold increase.

The now shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), pretends that that was not the Conservatives policy for 14 years, and we now hear a litany of ideas—roadside solar, rail solar, floating solar—but none of them was driven forward in the 14 years that they were in government. Forgive me if I think that it is a little bit rich for them to be oppositionist, not having driven any of it forward when they were in government.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

The Minister is talking about using a very small proportion of the United Kingdom. I understand his point, but when all of that small proportion falls on the best bits of agricultural land, that is not sensible. If one were looking at a strategic framework and desiring to use 0.1% or 0.2% of the country for solar, one would look at the least useful land for food security for doing that, not the best.

[Michael Shanks]

I will come on to that point.

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[Michael Shanks]

I will not be able to go into the detail of everyone’s points, but the hon. Member is wrong about the land use framework. Perhaps he should read it again, because it details quite clearly the different land uses across the country. There is always tension about land use—of course there is. That has been true throughout history, and that is why we are strategically planning it.

We are clear that the planning system recognises best use. Every application is considered on its merits; I am not going to be drawn on individual applications, but we have clearly said that ground-mounted solar should be used, wherever possible, not on the best-used land.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

rose—

[Michael Shanks]

I am not going to give way to the hon. Lady again because I want to come to floating solar, which the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne eloquently made the case for. I completely agree that it is a hugely exciting technology that we should be expanding, and I also agree that there are none of the trade-offs that there often are in other deployments and that there are huge benefits. He and I have both visited the project at the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir near his constituency. It is a fantastic example of floating solar, which has the benefits of generating clean electricity and retaining water in the reservoir. We want to see how we can also utilise that power to reduce the local demand so that there are some real benefits for local communities.

We are taking forward a number of actions. I am sorry if the hon. and gallant Member thinks that floating solar was not given a prominent enough position in the solar road map, but I assure him it has a prominent enough position on my to-do list. We are driving those key actions forward because there is no reason why we should not be doing that more quickly. There are projects in the pipeline that we will try to support wherever we can.

On the argument that there is a trade-off between that and covering rooftops, reservoirs, motorways or any other space that people can come up with, I am open to all of those ideas. I agree that we should be doing much more on rooftops. The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire made the point about some of the complexities with landlords and tenants. It is complex, but it is not impossible and we need to work our way through dealing with that.

It is important that we recognise the scale of the challenge. The scale of our electricity demand means that we need to see more ground-mounted solar as well; it is not either/or. Rooftop solar is important in our mission, and floating solar will be important, but the deployment of ground-mounted solar will also be important in communities across the country. We want those communities to get a genuine a benefit from it, so the points around locally owned power are critical.

In closing, I recognise that at this moment in particular, the lessons we have to take from the crisis in the middle east is that we need to move further and faster away from reliance on fossil fuels, but we have to take communities with us on that journey as well. That is why I want to see communities owning more of this infrastructure and benefiting from it. We also need to make the argument to everyone in our constituencies that the reason they have been exposed time and again to sky-high energy bills is because of our exposure to a fossil fuel market that we cannot control. There is no shortcut to building a system that protects us from that and there is no option to simply build another system somewhere else. At some point, infrastructure has to be built somewhere, and it is simply not a reasonable argument to say, “I’m in favour of this, but please don’t build it anywhere near me.” We will not embark on that.

The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire kindly referenced the size of my constituency—I do not think I have ever heard the exact number of hectares. The previous Government built one of the biggest onshore wind farms right next to my constituency. I support that; it is the right thing to do for our energy security. If it was right under that Government, it is also right that we build the infrastructure that we need now, bringing communities with us but also being clear that it is the right path for the country and our energy security.