The only significant new step announced by the energy security secretary today, according to the lobbyists, concerns perceptions of accuracy in ranking the soil quality on agricultural land housing new racks of panels.

The government intends to strengthen such perceptions by means of more independent certification in land assessments sent by developers to planning authorities.  This measure is intended to help avoid disputes over which areas are subject to planning guidelines on higher quality agricultural land.

“Both Coutinho and the Prime Minister’s broader comments on food security appear to be directed at a small minority of anti-solar Conservative backbenchers, rather than decision-makers in local councils”, said Solar Energy UK in a statement released this afternoon.

“Solar farms take up a tiny fraction of the country. That will still be the case in 2035 when the government expects us to have four times current solar generation capacity”, said the industry body, citing the government’s April 2022 Energy Security Strategy, and a Carbon Brief evaluation later that year on solar farms’ impact on UK farmland.

“Solar farms are no threat to food security; they never have been and never will be. In fact, it’s the opposite,” said Solar Energy UK’s ‘roi soleil’, chief executive Chris Hewett.

“According to Defra, the main threat to food security is climate change, which is what solar farms are there to fight.”

“Without solar farms, hundreds of traditional farming businesses would have gone to the wall, unable to produce food without the security of a reliable income,” Hewett added.

Yesterday the government published the first release of Britain’s new official Food Security Index. The cost of energy to food producers was among key factors it identifies.

By the government’s own figures, the lobbyists claim, solar farms are the cheapest source of electricity, adding to their contribution to food security, to decarbonisation and thus to Britain’s broader national interests.

Advocates for solar farms say it is common for agriculture to continue in fields once panels are hooked up, typically through sheep grazing. Racks erected a metre and more above the soil also offer benefits to nature, such as providing shelter for wildlife and native flora, thus restoring natural habitats among intensively farmed ‘green deserts’.

Solar farms are demonstrably liked by their human neighbours, as consistently evidenced in Whitehall’s own surveys. Independent research in November by analysis firm Climate Barometer found that MPs & casual readers of newspapers vastly overestimate public opposition to farms’ introduction.

“The solar industry will continue to follow established principles”, the lobbyists’ statement went on. “(The industry) looks forward to the publication of the government-industry Solar Roadmap, which will light the way towards adding more than 50GW of solar capacity over the next decade”. The master plan is expected in coming weeks.

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Extending volumes of power hosting for periods beyond two hours is seen as critical to extracting carbon from grids, and balancing a system increasingly reliant on intermittent generation from renewable sources.

Central to Whitehall’s latest thinking is developing a cap and floor price mechanism, analogous to the contracts for difference model successfully deployed in spurring investment to advance wind, solar and hydro electricity.

Deploying up to 20 gigawatts (GW) of long duration electricity storage will result, the document calculates, in system savings of up to £24bn, representing a saving to consumers of 3.3% of the total system costs.

Aimed at investors, power suppliers, storage project developers and technologists, consumer groups and network operators, the views-gathering exercise runs until 5 March.

The department’s call for evidence in July 2021 identified barriers to long duration storage including lack of certainty about revenues, high upfront capital costs and long build times.

Whitehall’s outline thinking offers suggestions for eligibility criteria to regulate participants in storage markets, as well as scenarios developed by D-ESNZ officials for their growth.

Industry and commercial interests have been increasingly pondering the steps needed in financial and technical engineering to bring forward grid-scale long-term power endurance in serious volumes. Consultancy McKinseys initiated its international research group in 2021.

Last winter, consultants Stonehaven advising ‘liquid air’ technologists Highview Power calculated that Britain had wasted as much as £ 60 billion over four winter months alone, through lack of long-term power storage.

Renewables and clean tech trades body the REA two years ago published its own thinking on long-duration power hosting and despatch.

Its head of policy Frank Gordon gave the ministry’s two-month consulation a warm welcome.

“The REA welcomes the publication of proposals to reward the considerable system benefits from longer duration energy storage systems with a new support mechanism. We need much more of this valuable resource, alongside all forms and durations of energy storage, to make the transition to a Net Zero energy system as smooth and cost effective as possible.

”We look forward to discussing the details with Government and our members and working together on implementation as soon as possible.”

Read the government consultation document here.

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Elected in 2019 for the East Surrey constituency with a 24,000 majority, Coutinho, 38, had earlier been a special advisor at HM Treasury during Rishi Sunak’s spell as Chancellor.

Since last October she had served as under-secretary of state for children, families & well-being,  following a year as minister for disabled persons at the Department for Work and Pensions.

An Oxford graduate in maths and philosophy, Coutinho’s career history includes spells at investment bank Merrill Lynch & accountants KPMG.  Before entering Parliament she worked at the Centre for Social Justice think tank.

Backing Sunak as leader last summer in the Conservatives’ internal choice versus Truss, the Brexit-voting Coutinho is on the advisory board of Onward, the Conservatives’ centrist policy group, headed by Lord Danny Finkelstein.

Sunak created D-ESNZ earlier this year, highlighting both energy’s role in the UK’s post-Ukraine security and Net Zero goals judged inadequately stressed by the old Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

Issues awaiting its new boss include energy’s contribution to the continuing cost-of-living crisis, confirming Sunak’s declared enthusiasm for “hundreds” of new oil extraction licences, and defending the government’s implementation of its Net Zero agenda against increasingly restive Conservative media and backbenchers such as the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, headed by South Thanet MP Craig McKinley.

Modelling itself on the Europe Research Group instrumental in securing Brexit, McKinley’s ginger group enjoys close links to Tufton Street’s covertly funded Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Departing environment minister Lord Zac Goldsmith is among green-conscious Conservatives recently questioning Sunak’s commitment to combatting the planet’s climate catastrophe.  Declarations last month by oil minster Andrew Tweedie that Sunak’s government will press ahead to “max out” Britain’s untapped North Sea reserves increase liberal and centrist Tories’ nervousness.

Coutinho’s links to centrist Tories such as Finkelstein may be seen as Sunak’s reassurance to Conservatives on the party’s beleaguered left.

The daughter of doctors with roots in Pune, India, Coutinho was once a contestant on the TV cooking show, ‘The Taste’, in which Nigella Lawson was a judge.

The premier’s mini-reshuffle today is caused by Ben Wallace’s intention declared in July to quit as defence secretary at the next re-shuffle, after four years in the post.

Shapps, 54, had headed D-ESNZ since its formation in February, and had run D-BEIS since last October, when he replaced Jacob Rees-Mogg, incumbent under the 45-days of Liz Truss.

Shapps, Home Secretary for six days under the self-destructing Truss, now heads military policy.

In 2012 the Welwyn Hatfield MP was permitted to remain a minister under David Cameron, – whom he had backed to lead the Tories – after revelations that in his early business career, Shapps had sold “personal wealth enhancement” software online for his How to Corp brand, under the fictitious aliases “Michael Green”, “Sebastian Fox” and “Corrine Stockheath”.

Having initially threatened legal action against his accuser, a constituent named Dean Archer, Shapps admitted in 2015 he had indeed traded under a pseudonym.  He had also “over-firmly denied” having a second job while an MP, Shapps admitted.

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