14:30 Caroline Johnson (Conservative)

Today I would like to shed light on an issue that has the potential to have a significant adverse effect on the constituents I represent in Sleaford and North Hykeham. I am concerned about the industrialisation of our countryside through large-scale solar farms. Solar power does have its merits in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the transition to a sustainable future. However, while acknowledging the merits of solar farms, it is also essential that I address the concerns that have quite rightly been raised by my constituents. Some of the solar farms proposed in my constituency would dramatically alter the landscape for the worse, shattering the character of what is not only beautiful countryside but highly productive arable land.

The Government have produced plans to reach net zero and create sustainable and reliable energy production —for example, yesterday my hon. Friend the Minister announced plans to expand British nuclear. It is estimated by the Government that we will need to need use 0.5% of land to meet the solar panel target, but it is also estimated that 600,000 acres of south-facing industrial roof space is currently unused, and I do not believe that the Government anticipated all the panels being in Lincolnshire, or would wish for such an outcome.

The second mechanism is for mid-scale farms that do not have permitted development rights but fall below 50 MW. These are applied for using local planning authorities—essentially, elected local councils. The planning guidance says that local planning authorities should consider the site, size, colour and design of solar panels, their visual impact, the effects of glint and glare, the need for renewable energy not to automatically override environmental protections and, pertinently, the cumulative impact of solar panels on local amenities and landscapes.

I was informed yesterday that there are 12 NSIP applications currently in process in Lincolnshire for large solar farms, including Beacon Fen, Springwell, Heckington Fen and Fosse Green Energy, which all appear in my constituency. I am also reliably informed that there are a further two NSIP solar applications in the pipeline for North Kesteven. However, it is notable that as of yesterday there is only one small-scale application to our local council. The Government need to reflect on why they have created a planning system for solar panels that drives applications off the NSIP scale, as we have so many NSIPs in Lincolnshire and so few small applications.

I am not against solar power in principle, but I am desperately concerned that the character of our beautiful countryside could be completely altered by continual rows of glass panels, sometimes stretching for miles and miles. I am also concerned for my constituents, who did not seem to have been given an adequate say in projects that ultimately affect them the most. There is a great deal that we can do to transition to green energy, but surely there is a better alternative to industrialising our countryside.

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14:46 Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat)

It is really good that the issue of solar farms and planning has been raised. It is obvious to us all that we have to shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy; nobody would demur from that. As well as the environmental benefit of saving the planet, renewable energy also has the advantage of cutting people’s bills, and again nobody would argue against that.

When approval is sought for renewable energy projects—not just solar but onshore wind—they can hit a roadblock and get stuck in limbo. That is why this process can drag on and become a real scourge on our communities, as the developers and the local people battle it out.

Anyone buying a new Ordnance Survey map today will see something they would not have found 20 years ago: many new solar farms. I am not a big fan of the term “solar farm”, because to me a farm is for producing food, not electricity. Solar and wind are two of the quickest and cheapest forms of sustainable energy. If we are to reach net zero, we need a joined-up plan for connecting our existing power grid to renewable sources of energy. Solar accounts for just 5% of total electricity output, compared with about 27% for wind.

Two of the main challenges in respect of advancing plans for solar are, first, how we plug into the national grid and, secondly, how we address the concerns of local communities. I hear the point about how prized agricultural land can appear to be lost under solar panels. The effect on local communities relates not only to the site—people sometimes get a little bound up with what solar panels look like—but to the sustained level of heavy goods vehicle traffic, because a lot of traffic goes back and forth to maintain the panels. We have to properly address local communities’ concerns to ensure that we do not hold up all solar panels and all solar renewable energy in this country.

The Liberal Democrats in general are, and I in particular am, very much in favour of renewable energy, and I am happy to put that on the record. On solar in particular, some of the proposals for solar farms, as they are called, are too large; we need to distribute and disperse such renewable energy projects so that they do not take up vast tracts of land, as they do in my constituency.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for again seeking clarification. I will not be writing to Devon County Council, because that is not the local authority charged with planning, but certainly the local authorities in my patch that are charged with planning know that, in general terms, I am in favour of renewable energy generation, but that I am not in favour of the concentration of solar farms that we are seeing in particular parts of my patch.

In summary, if we are going to invest in schemes such as solar farms, their lifespans must not be too long and we need sustainable renewable energy solutions that work with farmers and local communities so that we can take people with us.

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14:55 Edward Leigh (Conservative)

Everyone is in favour of renewable energy and there is no harm in having some solar farms; the problem is the sheer scale in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire. Ten thousand acres of applications ring the small town of Gainsborough, and are marked on the map in the red and black. This is ludicrous overdevelopment. To distribute, say, 1,000 acres —that is the offer—in a large rural district such as West Lindsey, covering perhaps up to 600 square miles, would be reasonable, but 10,000 acres ringing one town is just ridiculous overdevelopment.

When I became the Energy Minister, I assumed that the renewable industry would be full of people like Richard Briers of the Good family. Remember the Goods in “The Good Life”? They were people interested in keeping goats in their garden and doing a lot of composting. In fact, they were the kind of people who drove flashy sportscars and had been selling double glazing the week before. It is clear that this is not about the environment and renewable energy; it is about getting rich quick.

In that brief period of the Government of my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena), tried to change the definition to include 3b land. A huge mountain of well-funded lobbying money was put in immediately to frustrate the whole process. Make no mistake: this is not about the countryside and it is not about producing green energy in the right controlled way. It is about money. Some people are going to get very rich indeed.

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15:05 Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)

I might come across as taking a slightly different view, but that is absolutely not why I am here. I represent a beautiful part of the world. There is not a massive amount of housing going on in my part of the world, and there is not a huge population. There is a huge amount of countryside. There is lots of farmland, and it is very productive land. Natural England—God bless it—has just taken a huge amount of farmland out of production for a site of special scientific interest. We must recognise that the land squeeze is not just about renewable energy.

I come at the issue from a different angle, in that the reform of policy allows us, as we have just heard, to get solar in the right place, deliver the right thing for our communities and address the cost of energy and the pressure on energy security. To give some context, the size of the prize, as we heard in the Chris Skidmore “Mission Zero” report on the upside opportunity of net zero, is likely to be over £1 trillion by the 2030s. That is a generational economic growth opportunity in relation to renewable energy. The downside risk, stemming from current issues in the UK planning grid and the wider investment climate, is potentially £62 billion of missed investment in the same period. That is not £62 billion-worth of solar farms all over our beautiful green and pleasant countryside. It is about having that £62 billion of investment in the right place. I will touch on that later.

The risk is crystallising in part due to the negative global headwinds that are adversely affecting the UK, such as post-covid inflation and the war in Ukraine, but also because of proposed policy decisions that have been deeply unpopular with investors—for example, the electricity generator levy and the continued issues with planning. Although the EGL was a negative indicator to the markets, more important issues pertaining to planning are holding up the connection of solar projects to the UK grid, slowing our transition to net zero and harming our ability to secure national energy security.

The situation is impacting a crucial partner in solar generation that often goes forgotten. We have referred to them today: the farmers and landowners. I have heard the comments about posh Land Rovers and very wealthy landowners; that is not the case in my neck of the woods. Farmers there are not extraordinarily rich and have not made a huge amount of money by using their land for things other than producing food. They are able to put renewable energy infrastructure, solar farms, and other stuff such as mobile connectivity, on their land in the right place where the land is not productive. That has actually helped farms to survive. We all know that if farms are not viable, they are broken up and sold off. Then we do get the very rich, Chelsea-tractor drivers coming into beautiful parts of the countryside and not looking after it. Maybe they have hobby farms or estates that do not protect the countryside.

The elephant in the room is grid capacity. When we consider planning and solar installations, surely it is better to look at where there is good grid capacity and where land can be made available, and to prioritise those areas. We are all committed to moving away from fossil fuels, and we all recognise that we must have energy security and reduce the cost of energy. We can do that through renewable energy. We have shown that in Cornwall; for a long time, we were the leading county for onshore renewable energy. That position has been stolen from us, partly because of grid capacity. The clever move is to understand not only what land use is about and how we identify what should be on that land, but where the capacity is, including grid capacity and the quality of land.

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15:14 Alicia Kearns (Conservative)

Solar will be an important part of our push for net zero. That is what we in Rutland want, but we will not have it at any price, and communities in Rutland and the Stamford villages will not accept blood-tainted products. To ensure that solar’s contribution is truly a positive one, I call on the Government to make guidance against building energy projects on BMV land legally binding. I ask them to urgently investigate solar developments misrepresenting their applications as generating only 49.9MW and to punish any offenders, and to follow the US and EU in finally blocking solar imports made with Uyghur forced labour as part of genocide, because to fail to act would be immoral.

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15:28 James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)

I have been a passionate environmentalist for most of my adult life and most of my time here in Parliament. I went to the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro as a special adviser in 1992, and since then have been involved in almost every aspect of environmental discussion in this place.

For that reason, I am passionate about the necessity to achieve net zero by 2050. We must do it; there is no question about it. I spent a lot of time travelling in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, and I have seen the effects of global warming. There is no question about it: we must do this thing, and renewable energy is of course the way we must do it. We should not come away from our commitment to the use of renewable energy to achieve net zero. I am also absolutely convinced that solar supplies a very large part of that. It is by far the cheapest, most effective and most efficient way of producing renewable energy, so I am a passionate supporter of solar energy, too. That is how I should perhaps preface my remarks.

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15:35 Matthew Pennycook (Labour)

The science, as we all know, is unequivocal. Bold action is required and it is required now. However, when it comes to the UK’s net zero emissions target, the Government have consistently been long on aspiration but short on tangible progress. The UK’s nationally determined contribution requires emissions reductions of 68% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels and the Government’s sixth carbon budget requires them to be slashed by 78% by 2035. Yet in their June 2023 progress report, the Climate Change Committee states plainly that its confidence in the achievement of both targets

The Government have also been clear as to the scale of solar deployment likely to be necessary to meet the UK’s wider net zero targets, with a technical annex to the “Power Up Britain” policy paper published in March suggesting that approximately 90 GW of solar will ultimately be necessary. Yet last year saw just 0.7 GW of new solar deployed, in a rate of installation that falls well short of what is required to meet the Government’s target. As the Climate Change Committee has stated in its 2023 progress report,

As the House is aware, the Labour party has committed to delivering a zero emission power system by 2030—five years ahead of the Government’s target date—and we assess that honouring that commitment will require us to triple the deployment of solar by the end of this decade to up to 50 GW of capacity. We are under no illusions: we know that is a stretching target, but it is essential to achieving zero carbon power by the end of the decade, and a Labour Government will do what is necessary to meet it.

Although we want the majority of solar to be deployed on rooftops, there is no question but that we will need to take steps to enable the deployment of far more ground-mounted solar than is presently being installed, and that will include a number of large sites. That will require reform of our planning system. We believe that the planning system as a whole needs to be overhauled and aligned fully with our net zero emissions target.

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15:46 Andrew Bowie (Conservative)

The dramatic rise in global energy prices following the covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has emphasised the urgency of the need to build a strong, home-grown renewable sector. Solar energy is key to achieving this. Solar farms are one of the most established renewable energy technologies in the UK and the cheapest form of electricity generation. We have seen an increase in the number and size of developments coming forward and expect this trend to continue. In the net zero strategy, the Government committed to installing up to 70 GW of solar capacity by 2035. That represents a fivefold increase in our current capacity, and we need to maximise the deployment of all types of solar to achieve this ambitious target.

My hon. Friend the Minister has just made the point that 23 planning applications are currently in the NSIP process. As far as I understand it, not a single proposal has been turned down yet by the Government. Does that mean that, no matter what, NSIP projects will be given the green light to go ahead, even if the Planning Inspectorate blacks out MPs’ responses and all sorts of other things? Are the projects genuinely being looked at on a case-by-case basis, or will we just green-light any NSIP project to get more green energy?

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