Solar Storm
The world urgently requires more renewable energy, but England's smallest county could be swamped by large scale industrial solar farms built on farmland.
Storm clouds were gathering on the horizon as I walked out early yesterday morning.
A weather warning had been issued and winds of up to 50mph were forecast along with lightning and heavy rain showers, all enough to bring down branches and trees in full summer leaf.
Before breakfast, Lyra and I planned to hot-foot it around our usual four-mile circular trail past Pilton and the fields where there are plans to develop a solar farm, then batten down the hatches for the rest of the day.
After last month’s heat – the hottest June on record in the UK and variously described by meteorologists as, “abnormal”, “extreme” and “unprecedented” – July has been cool, wet and unsettled. As I reached for my waterproof and Lyra’s lead, BBC news was reporting deadly heatwaves across southern Europe, Italy and Spain, and in North America, from Florida to California. Parts of the Canary Islands were being evacuated due to wildfires, while South Korea was suffering fatal floods.
“Come on, Lyra,” I said, looking down on canine eyes wide with anticipation. “Let’s get out.”
Up on High Rutland, along the ancient path and bridleway between South Luffenham and Pilton, clouds scudded low and fast over the landscape almost touching the tops of the limestone ridges. Wind hissed through hawthorn hedges. Trees rocked unsteadily like punch drunk heavyweights, while clumps of leaves were ripped from branches like flying fur in a cat fight.
In the grassy south-facing paddocks where solar panels might be sited, sheep huddled close, lying down for shelter on the cropped turf. Lyra chased leaves down the lane, as if it was autumn. It was no calm before the storm, but there was the same eerie anticipation that worse was to come.
Climate change is no longer something that is happening elsewhere. Evidently, it’s here, everywhere and now. News of extreme weather events and the risk to life from heat, drought, fire and flood is now normalised to the extent it’s easy to become numb to its life-and-death importance.
Curiously, in the UK it seems that more media air time is currently being devoted to the rights-and-wrongs of Just Stop Oil’s disruption of British summer sporting, social and cultural events than the issue at the heart of the matter, fossil fuels’ contribution to climate change.
While the inconvenient throwing of orange paper and jigsaw puzzle pieces over the green courts of Wimbledon was met with groans, there was more talk of the umpire reminding spectators not to pop Champagne corks during play. Spectators tittered. (Meanwhile, France’s great Champagne estates continue to eye and buy land in south east England precisely because climate change is threatening production on home terroir. Deuce.)
Just Stop Oil’s protests are attention-grabbing, its demand simple: no new licenses for oil, gas and coal fields. In isolation, it makes logical sense and sound policy not to increase production of hydrocarbons. The group’s website features a quote from Sir David King, the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Government, who said in 2021, “What we do over the next three to four years, I believe, is going to determine the future of humanity.” He’s right, of course.
To reduce emissions of carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels, the world needs more renewable energy, fast. Globally, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has set a target to limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century. To achieve this, greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 and then decline 43 per cent by 2030. And that means a rapid shift to renewable energy sources, including offshore and onshore wind, nuclear and solar, as well as domestic heat source pumps.
The UK aims to produce 95 per cent of its electricity from low carbon sources by 2030. Solar energy, which is perceived to be low cost when ground mounted, currently takes up approximately 0.1 per cent of land. To meet the Government’s net zero target, the generation of solar energy needs to increase five-fold from 14GW to 70GW by 2035, requiring 0.3 per cent of land.
The proposed Staveley Solar Farm, on my regular walk between the villages of Pilton, Morcott and Wing, is one such development – and one of four large-scale size solar farms planned for Rutland. Combined, these installations would cover not 0.3 per cent of the land, but up to three per cent of the entire county, ten times what is notionally required.
England’s smallest county, already home to the country’s largest reservoir, could now become one of the UK’s most densely covered regions for industrial solar farms.
Perhaps that’s something to be proud of. But the reality and the motivation is as ugly as the largely Chinese made panels themselves – and it’s set alarm bells ringing.
What’s happening is not a strategically planned roll-out of solar generation with joined-up thinking: it’s a greed-filled gold rush. The goal is not sustainability, but profit – and the end result could be far from sustainable.
At the half-way point on our walk, Lyra and I stopped to lean on a gate overlooking a field of barley, buffeted by the breeze. On the horizon, a mile to the west, the imposing industrial box buildings of Anglian Water’s Wing Water Treatment Works, the private company that owns and operates Rutland Water. Skylarks braved the strengthening wind and trilled high above the golden field. This land, too, would be transformed into a hard, grey industrial landscape of solar panels, infrastructure, security cameras and fences. The area around here is home to lapwings, too, another red list conservation bird.
The developer behind the proposed solar farm is none other than Anglian Water, a private company that is 85 per cent overseas owned, with a start-up partner, Bluestone Energy. Virtually all of the electricity generated by this private enterprise would be supplied to Anglian Water, not local homes and the National Grid. The result would be huge cost-saving benefits delivered direct to the bottom line of a highly profitable company that is part-owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The company would benefit from cheap electricity that would boost its profits and, should it wish, continue to increase executive pay.
As I wrote on June 11 in River Man, Anglian Water is one of the worst performing water companies when it comes to serious pollution incidents, with 14 recorded in 2021. In 2022, the UK’s Environment Agency gave Anglian Water an Environmental Performance Assessment (EPA) of two stars, meaning the company ‘requires improvement’ and an amber status, reflecting its ‘below target’ performance.
To fix its sewage spills, we ‘customers’ will have to pay higher bills while the profits continue to leak overseas.
Standing overlooking the field of barley, listening to the skylarks, I feel a tension and anger rising inside me. The UK is one of the few countries in the world with a fully privatised water system. Why, when we have failed to properly regulate one precious resource, are we now heading down another insufficiently regulated path of privatisation? And why, in this case, are we enabling the very same company that is failing to meet benchmark environmental standards to apply for a development that would require careful environmental management?
In announcing Staveley Solar Farm, Anglian Water and its partner sought to persuade Rutland County Council – successfully as it turned out, shockingly – that an Environmental Impact Assessment was not required.
For myself and members of the Rutland Solar Action Group, a campaign group formed by concerned local residents to stop the development, this was beyond the pale. A formal complaint was submitted to the council for failing to follow its own planning procedures. Now, we have formed a limited company to raise money to campaign and employ professional planning and legal support to fight the anticipated planning application for Staveley Solar Farm.
At first, I felt guilty opposing plans for renewable energy. When I raised my considered objection on social media, I was branded a selfish NIMBY (not in my back yard). A local youth group leader reacted instantly online and poured scorn on detractors and called for shame on those not acting in the best interests of young people. He said he would speak to his group to educate them. I hope he did, but in an informed and balanced way.
Ten years ago, living in a town, detached from nature, I might have reacted in the same way. But the hard landscapes and paved-over front gardens of the suburbs don’t necessarily allow you to immerse yourself in nature, or witness our depleted and declining countryside.
I spoke to my 18-year-old son, who recently completed his sciences and maths A Levels and is set to study chemistry at university, to get his perspective. He said, “Solar power generally is a good way of generating sustainable energy. I don’t know about the sorts of materials used and the industrial processes involved to manufacture panels. I think they are more suited to being on houses for domestic use than in a large farmland area.
“Soil has a lot more to offer from an ecological standpoint than people would assume. It’s not just a field you are putting panels on, you are disrupting a whole interconnected ecosystem and world on a microscopic level. You disrupt one thing in biology, you disrupt everything. Even if the ecosystem used to be a quarry, something will always flourish.”
Part of the land was indeed a quarry, with ironstone removed to Staveley in distant Derbyshire, to supply a steel works. The land was subsequently restored because of the damage done then. Now, the developers cynically seeks to use its history and name to present it as a brownfield site, not 200 acres of restored agricultural land, while tempting the farmer with a handsome financial offer likely to match the going rate of around £1,000 per acre per year over a 40-year lease. That’s £200,000 per year or £8 million over the full term of the lease.
Little is said about the fact that 45 per cent of the world’s polysilicon supply required for solar panel manufacturing comes from China and regions where Uyghur forced labour is used. Many companies involved in the supply chain and development of solar farms are compromised by such links to forced labour in China.
The developers have announced they will submit their planning application this summer. As a local action group, we are doing what we can. In the past week we have launched a website explaining our position and reasons for objecting, a petition and crowdfunding page.
But we are part-time amateurs and will be fighting a large corporation, its partner and their professional agencies and advisors. Democracy and the planning system feels weighted against us. We worry that communication and conversations might already be happening between the developer and council officers and councillors, outside the sphere of public scrutiny. We simply don’t know, but can’t easily hold our council or the developer to account.
If we had more enlightened government policy, putting the emphasis on roof-mounted solar on industrial buildings, along motorways and over car parks, as they do in France, perhaps we would not be having to fight solar farms on farmland. Why not build all new houses with solar panels? Why hasn’t this been a policy for the past five years or more? Perhaps more smaller scale solar farms directly benefiting communities might be more acceptable?
The developers say it is cheaper to mount panels on the ground and farmland is easier than brownfield sites. But no cost to nature is factored in, only the cost on a profit and loss sheet. Private companies’ definition of sustainability is narrow and typically focuses on the last element of sustainability’s triple bottom line – people, planet and profit.
It feels like a David and Goliath battle ahead. But it shouldn’t be like this – we should have better policy, regulation and planning, not a wild west free-for-all.
What’s wild now is the wind, whipping through the hedgerows along Wing Road. These sanctuaries for wildlife have been brutally butchered in the past fortnight, despite recent law preventing hedgerow cutting from the end of March until the beginning of September, to enable birds to breed. More destruction in the narrow margins where nature could thrive given a chance.
Lyra and I catch our breath as we walk up the hill into the village. I turn to look back at the long high ridge where sheep graze today on green pastures under low, grey cloud, but where solar panels might one day clad the hilltop and meet the sky in mono-greyness. Why is it, when sustainability is belatedly front of mind, that we find a way to privately sell off the sun’s rays, putting power and profit in the pocket of the richest, potentially at the expense of people and the planet? Why is policy so reactive and one-dimensional, lacking in joined-up, long-term thinking?
I wonder if we have any hope of stopping this development and influencing policy to create effective and balanced sustainable solutions. I open the door to the house and Lyra trots inside, happy to shelter from the wild weather and gathering summer storm.
Rutland Solar Action Group
Petition to Stop Staveley Solar Farm
You should send this as an opinion piece to the Guardian or somewhere like that. The lack of coordinated planning is shocking as is Anglian Water’s role in this.