The UK government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has published a strategy paper noting that renewables, housing and food production are “not competing demands”.
In a foreword to the first official Land Use Framework for Englandpublished by Defra on March 18, Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds said: “We have enough land to build the homes needed to tackle the housing crisis, sustain domestic food production, restore nature at scale and build clean, domestic energy to deliver energy security.”
The framework document, which Reynolds noted, is not a replacement for the planning system (which has been revamped in recent years to give weight to sustainable development), but should “provide every farmer, whether owner or tenant, with the rights, data and certainty to invest.” [in land] with confidence”.
Compared to the other options (such as housing) covered by the Land Use Framework, solar energy can be developed alongside agriculture – the practice of cattle grazing around ground-mounted solar panelsagrivoltaic energy, is widely used worldwide.
The framework also mentions the biodiversity benefit provided by solar energy developments. One of the key principles that Defra says it will follow when determining the best use of land is multifunctionality.
It states that land use should be planned and managed to deliver ‘benefits across a range of outcomes’, citing solar energy generation designed to enable the restoration of upland peatlands to reduce carbon emissions, store water and create biodiverse habitats as an example of this.
Commenting on the document, Chris Hewett, CEO of Solar Energy UK (SEUK), said: “The framework underlines that the Government’s plans for housing, energy, food, climate change and nature all require changes to the way land is used across England.
“This means that more efficient use is paramount – and solar energy is one of the most effective, efficient and diversified uses of land available.”
However, it is worth noting that (as SEUK highlights) the actual amount of land occupied by renewable generation is relatively low.
SEUK uses the graph below, using data from Natural England, to demonstrate this.
Image: Solar Energy UK.
Future prospects for solar land use
Defra’s report predicts that by 2030, as the government moves towards an energy system largely powered by renewables (95%), solar and wind energy will continue to represent a small proportion of land use.
By 2050, when the Paris Agreement should see Britain achieve net zero emissions, strategic spatial planning (with the first ever Strategic Spatial Energy Plan by the end of 2027) will “ensure fairer and more efficient distribution of solar and wind infrastructure across England,” the framework says.
Defra noted this in the consultancy prior to the frameworkheard from communities in the North East of England that large solar power stations are “expected to transform the agricultural landscape”.
The rhetoric that large-scale solar projects pose a threat to rural communities has been adopted by political parties that are against renewable energy sourceswhere the energy transition is used as a means to mobilize against the current government.
However, as Defra’s paper notes, local clean energy offers benefits to communities, monetary and otherwise. Previously cited reports from Solar energy portal notice that Public buy-in is generally increasing among those living near existing solar power plantsindicating that the impact is smaller than generally feared.
Defra also said that nationally, solar power plants are “small percentage changes in land use”, again pointing to the potential for agriculture to continue alongside solar.
It also pointed out the benefit of rooftop solar PV in urban and suburban areas, which they say place the highest demands on our energy system and as such “must be supplied locally and sustainably”.
Echoing the response popular among critics of large-scale solar development, Defra said: “By deploying technologies such as rooftop solar, we can make use of existing built-up land for electricity generation, reducing pressure on land for renewables in other areas.”
SEUK also expressed interest in the measure included in the framework to provide free access to data on larger properties, saying this could “in principle” accelerate the first phases of solar development “by making it faster and easier to identify the owners of suitable sites with access to the electricity grid”.
That acceleration is the goal of the Australian company RELA, which just launched its RELA Prepay offering in the UK marketT.
