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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Ian Rippon, CEO of technical standards assurers the MCS, told the committee that photovoltaic panels on home rooftops “as a mainstay of the Future Homes Standard is critical”.

Presented by the government as the biggest re-think yet of much criticised, seldom enforced building controls, the Future Homes Standard is intended to improve Britain’s notoriously lax standards of home insulation, and ease dwellings towards Net Zero compliance.  Implemented in part since June, the new measures’ full introduction is scheduled for 2025.

“The problem now is that it’s – (PV installation) in pockets, depending on local building regulations”, Rippon explained.

Beside him, Chris Hewett, boss of lobbyists SolarEnergyUK, said industry expectations now are that “pretty much every English home built from 2025 will have some solar generation capacity”.

The government’s Energy Generator Levy, a windfall tax on the sector now facing at least one challenge in the courts, Hewett described as “a mistake”, producing an “unlevel playing field”.  It gives solar developers no incentive to offset it through investment, said the lobbying boss, despite Britain’s dire need to be weaned off natural gas.

Quizzed on UK-wide targets to have 70GW of solar power capacity generating by 2035, – against 15.5GW today including farms – , Hewett replied that the aspiration was “definitely enough… and it’s feasible”.

Solar’s projected rise to contribute 10% of Britain’s power demand, up from 4% now, is needed to meet national needs growing from increasing electrification of heating, homes and transport, the PV industry believes.

Installers and suppliers expect about two-thirds of UK solar PV capacity by 2035 to come from ground-mounted racks, with residential and commercial roofs providing the rest. Floating solar farms, such as on a Thames Water reservoir near Heathrow airport, could contribute after 2035, said Hewett.

Written evidence cited by Anna McMorrin MP warned that grid connections are not speeding up. Farm developers face waits well into the 2030s.  The MP described the National Grid as a “pretty broken system”.

Regional targets for grid connections could spur DNOs to respond quicker, Alastair Buckley, Sheffield University’s professor of organic electronics believed.

Committee chair and Conservative MP Philip Dunne later suggested that grid access could be the subject of its own dedicated inquiry.

Green MP Caroline Lucas suspected so-called Smart Export Guarantees offered by power retailers are too miserly to woo homeowners into solar adoption.  MCS boss Rippin agreed. “It’s been taken over by the economics of cheaper solar. There is a problem of fairness” he added.

Cheap capital is needed to spur homeowners to install PV, Hewett told MPs. He cited 0% loans made available by Scotland’s government for insulation, as well as retro-fitting PV & heat pumps.

Dr Chris Case leads technology innovators at Oxford PV.  Two years ago, the firm’s perovskite enhancement pushed standard silicon cells to a record conversion efficiency of over 29%. That’s fully a third better than current standards on the world’s roofs.

Case described as “perverse” the Treasury’s treatment of VAT on home batteries storage systems. Homeowners must shoulder the tax’s 20% burden when adding a battery to pre-installed panels.  Installing both at the same time attracts no VAT.

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Parliamentary manoeuvres at Westminster saw right-wingers allying with the party’s minority of ecologically-exercised MPs, resulting Sunak offering public consultations ending in April to lift David Cameron’ ban, now seven years old, on constructing land-based windfarms.

On Tuesday evening Sunak said he would permit stakeholders’ representations on Britain’s national planning policy, opening the door to a restoration of on-shore erection of turbines.  Approval of  land-based schemes will be confined to local councils, rather than having them passed to Whitehall’s inspectors as items of national infrastructure.

A single objection to any application for onshore turbines currently spells failure now at the planning stage.  In the five years to 2020, only 16 new turbines were approved in England, a 96% drop on pre-ban erections.

Development in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty will remain prohibited, under Sunak’s proposals.

The premier eased Cameron’s curb to head off a group of rebels led by former minister Simon Clarke. It included his two immediate predecessors at No 10, plus Alok Sharma, chair of last year’s CoP26 climate talks.

Clarke, who had tabled a motion opposing the ban, welcomed the premier’s concession.  “Onshore wind is the cheapest form of energy bar none”,  he said.  “What I and fellow Conservative MPs have said is simply that communities ought to be able to make this decision for themselves, rather than have Whitehall to rule it out,” he said.

So did developers.  Octopus Energy have since early 2021 run their Fan Club, which offers 50% tariff cuts to homeowners happy to welcome a new turbine into their postcode.

“We’re huge fans of onshore wind and so is the overwhelming majority of the British public, Zoisa North-Bond, boss of the firm’s generation arm, said.  She cited a recent YouGov survey commissioned by the generator, indicating that 87% of people would support in a turbine in their community, in return for cheaper bills.

“Onshore wind is one of the cheapest and quickest forms of energy we can generate right here on our soil – and by removing the red tape, we can build it fast for communities that want it.

Just as green, still as pleasant

Chris Heaton-Harris, now Sunak’s Northern Ireland secretary, in 2015 led Tory nimbys who strong-armed Cameron into erecting near-insuperable barriers to new English turbines.

Solar developers took heart too this week, as  Sunak’s environment secretary Thérèse Coffey explicitly reversed a threat from her predecessor to stop solar farms being built on moderate-quality Grade 3B farmland, home to most of Britain’s existing 14GWp of solar.

Ranil Jayawardena, environment secretary in Liz Truss’s 44-day administration, had mooted a ban, in deference to his doomed boss’ prejudice that ‘solar paraphenalia’ allegedly threatened Britain’s food security.

Speaking to the Commons’ environment, food and rural affairs committee on Tuesday, Coffey backed “a lot more” solar generation on farms, including on 3b-quality land.

Farming minister Mark Spencer later echoed Coffey in a newspaper interview.

“We shouldn’t be stopping farmers who want to diversify their income from doing that as that would be harmful, so I’d have no problem with them putting some solar panels down on 3b land,” said Spencer.

“Tuesday was a turning point for the entire renewables sector”, said Chris Hewett, chief executive of trade body Solar Energy UK.

“It will be a great relief to the solar industry to hear  Thérèse Coffey supports existing planning rules. These have successfully encouraged development away from the best-quality agricultural land while recognising the critical need to expand solar farms in response to the climate and energy price crisis. This looks like a significant shift from the anti-solar rhetoric of her predecessor,”  said Hewett

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