As energy bills soar to unprecedented levels and the perils of climate change appear with increasing frequency on our TV screens, it is of course essential we make every effort to find alternative sources of energy which are clean, cheap and renewable. Photovoltaic solar panels offer just that, and you don’t need to be a member of the green lobby to accept they are in general a good thing. However, in a race to install as many solar farms as quickly as possible, the industry risks becoming an unregulated free-for-all and, in the process, storing up problems for British agriculture.
Supporters of solar farms may not fully understand what’s happening in some rural areas and why it might prove damaging to Britain’s longer-term food security. Do not imagine solar farms are all small, unobtrusive and installed by local landowners. Recent planning applications are for increasingly massive arrays, on huge areas of productive farmland, funded by mysterious overseas companies, often in the teeth of local opposition.
Unlike small solar farms, large arrays need high-capacity connections and these are scarce so developers are forced to crowd solar farms close to available grid links adjacent to existing power stations for example, giving rise to serious problems for small rural communities.
The experience of Selby is perhaps typical of many other largely agricultural districts all over England and provides a cautionary tale. This the first of two articles on solar farms.
First a few basic facts
To understand the issue, we need to establish a few basic facts.
First is the agricultural land classification system used in England. Farmland is divided into six classes ranging from excellent to very poor, with the first three (called 1, 2 and 3a) known as the best and most versatile or BMV. The rest (3b, 4 and 5) is poorer quality, mainly used for a narrow range of crops (grass for harvesting for example) or grazing.
Wisely, the government wants to avoid using BMV land for solar farms. This is a rational and sensible decision for a country that imports half of the food it consumes.
Eric Pickles, then communities secretary, said in a 2015 written ministerial statement that, “any proposal for a solar farm involving the best and most versatile agricultural land would need to be justified by the most compelling evidence”.
A draft national planning policy statement (NPPS) for Renewable Energy Infrastructure (EN-3) published last year, says:
“Where possible, ground mounted Solar PV projects should utilise previously developed land, brownfield land, contaminated land, industrial land, or agricultural land preferably of classification 3b, 4, and 5 (avoiding the use of ‘Best and Most Versatile’ cropland where possible).”
The British energy security strategy, last updated in April this year, again encourages largescale projects to locate on previously developed, or lower value land, where possible, and ensure projects are designed to avoid the impacts of using greenfield sites. The added emphases above by the way are all mine.
In other words, using BMV land is the absolute last resort for solar farms.
The NPPS also says where solar farms are located near existing grid connections “consideration should be given to the cumulative impacts of situating a solar farm in proximity to other energy generating stations and infrastructure”. In Selby’s case this is important, as we shall see.
Applications for solar farms below 50MW go to the local planning authority. Above that they are regarded as nationally significant infrastructure projects and are determined by the Planning Inspectorate after a public examination.
The government is NOT planning to ban solar farms on ‘most’ farmland
A report in The Guardian recently sensationally claimed the government was “planning to ban solar farms from most of England’s farmland”.
This is not quite true. The government is considering a small tweak to the guidance and shifting 3b land into the BMV category where solar farms should be avoided “where possible”. But if the experience of Selby is anything to go by, it will make no difference since developers and planners are routinely ignoring the guidance anyway.
Selby district solar farm history
In the Selby district, there have been 13 planning applications since 2015, initially for small arrays between 5MW and 40MW on poor quality farmland. As far as I can see they received few if any objections and several were approved without fuss. So far so good. More recently however, the applications have become larger and on prime agricultural land, and opposition is growing.
In June 2021, Camblesforth Solar Farm Ltd submitted an application for a 50MW installation on 113 hectares of agricultural land north of Camblesforth, almost half of which was BMV. The applicant’s agent, Lanpro Services, said there were “no brownfield sites within the district available” and no other “sites which could be considered more sequentially preferable”.
In approving the plans, the planning officer accepted this and added that the BMV land would only be used “temporarily” – that is for 40 years – and that the parish council was “generally supportive”.
Solar Farm – Camela Lane, Camblesforth
Within weeks another applicant, Boom Power Ltd had submitted plans for a 50MW solar farm on 77 hectares near Osgodby, about 5km further north. Selby’s landscape officer noted this scheme would “remove Best and Most Versatile (BMV) agricultural land from productive use for at least 40 years, without sufficiently demonstrating preference for poor quality land in the local area”.
Solar Farm – Osgodby, Selby
No compelling evidence seemed to be produced or demanded to show why BMV land was needed. Nevertheless, the planning officer approved the application on the grounds that BMV land was “not in short supply” within the district.
In August this year, Lanpro Services – acting this time as agents for Carlton Solar Farm Ltd – found another site to the south of Camblesforth and submitted plans for a third 50MW solar farm. This is on 166 hectares of agricultural land, the majority being BMV. It has not yet been approved.
Solar Farm – Wade House Lane, Camblesforth
Two months before, Enso Green Holdings D Ltd applied for a scoping opinion (a forerunner to a full application) this time to the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol for a huge 250MW solar array – the Helios project – on 757 hectares of agricultural land, west of Camblesforth. They admitted that over 94% of the site is BMV. Some homeowners on this project are dismayed to find their properties enclosed on four sides by solar panels.
Helios Renewable Energy Project, Camblesforth
Finally, in September, just across the river Ouse rubbing shoulders with Selby’s eastern border, Boom Power requested a scoping opinion from the Planning Inspectorate for a mammoth 420MW solar farm on 1,173 hectares of mostly lower-grade land between Howden and Bubwith called the East Yorkshire Solar Farm.
There is now a vigorous Facebook group (HALT Selby Area Solar Farm & Battery Storage) campaigning against these sites.
Where is the ‘most compelling evidence’
As far as I can see not a single applicant has provided any evidence let alone any ‘most compelling evidence’ showing why the guidance to avoid using BMV land is being ignored.
The only justification seems to be that all the sites (except Osgodby) are close to Drax power station with high-voltage (132 kV) grid connections available. A 50MW site further than 5km from a connection for example, is said to be not ‘commercially viable’ although there is no technical constraint to distance.
Boom Power claimed the Osgodby site would help to “satisfy the Council’s renewable energy targets”. But the 2013 Selby Local Plan set a modest renewable energy target of 32MW by 2021 using a range of technologies including solar thermal, photovoltaic, wind, biomass and fuel cells. The target was subject to revision but appears not to have changed.
The village of Camblesforth (population: 1,800) has nestled in the shadow of the 12 great cooling towers and 800-feet-high chimney of Drax power station since the late 1960s. For most of its life Drax was 100% coal fired but began to convert four generating units to biomass in 2013. It now produces 2,595MW of electricity, more than 80 times Selby’s target and 12% of the UK’s total renewable energy.
If the four solar sites in Selby all go ahead, another 400MW will be added, exceeding the target by a further 12.5 times but using over 900 hectares of BMV land to do it.
If the 1,173-hectare East Yorkshire Solar Farm is approved, Camblesforth will be hemmed in by Drax power station and a veritable sea of solar panels amounting to 2,286 hectares (23 sq km). This is about half the size of Doncaster, or 20 times the area enclosed by York’s ancient walls.
It is the wholesale industrialisation of a huge swathe of agricultural land.
To add to Camblesforth’s woes, in July Drax submitted plans to build a multi-billion-pound carbon capture and storage project on land to the east of the power station. Remember that consideration was supposed to be given to the ‘cumulative impacts’ of situating a solar farm in proximity to other energy generating stations and infrastructure.
What happens to farming?
The planning system is not designed to regulate the energy sector and large solar farms surely contain the seeds of future problems. At the moment it seems to be a free-for-all with no limit placed on the amount or location of agricultural land being offered to energy developers.
There is a website touting for land for solar farms (“no cost to you or commitment needed”). It claims to use “a network of more than 120 experienced and competent investors and developers searching for new sites to develop, install and operate solar farms”.
If harvesting solar energy is significantly more profitable than producing food, why would any farmer with suitable land refuse the chance to convert to energy generation? This may result in far more sites being approved than the future energy market can bear, and with a corresponding loss of agricultural output.
The National Farmers’ Union’s position is to strengthen planning rules “in favour of development on non-protected land or lower value land, where possible” and to support solar that is “co-located with agriculture to maximise the efficiency of land use”.
A farmer might expect to be paid £2,000–£2,400 per hectare (£850–£1,000 per acre) per year for the benefit of allowing a solar farm to be constructed. Setting aside 750 hectares, for example would generate a guaranteed £1.5mn in revenue annually, most of it profit. Many farmers might prefer to give up farming altogether, and who could blame them?
Even if large solar farms are ‘co-located’ with agriculture, there must be a competition-distorting impact on farmers without solar panels who are unable to subsidise lower crop prices or afford the best productivity-raising equipment to reduce production costs.
There are suggestions that solar farms might provide grazing for sheep but, even if this is practical, what does it mean for sheep farmers in Wales or elsewhere in Northern England where the land is unsuitable for solar generation because there isn’t enough solar irradiation or flat, level sites in those latitudes? Not only would they be competing with cheap imports from New Zealand or Australia, but also with lower-cost competitors decked out with solar panels in the southern UK.
It is also suggested the solar farms are temporary structures with the land returning to agricultural use after 40 years. But it’s far from certain this would happen in practice. Which landowner voluntarily gives up a substantial guaranteed income?
Are we simply damaging our food security and storing up problems for future generations? I think we might be.
Liz Webster of the campaign group Save British Food, says she is not anti-solar, which can be valuable to farmers as part of a well-considered plan. But she adds: “There needs to be careful management around them, to balance the needs of these hedge funds, farmers, tenant farmers, and the nation’s food security.”
Part 2 of this story is here:
