12 Thoughts On Solar Farms

Approving three major solar projects is a good start, here's what should come next

Within his first week of taking office, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has granted planning permission to three large-scale solar farms: Sunnica, Mallard Pass, and Gate Burton. These three farms combined have a max capacity of 1.5GW and will meet the power needs of around 450,000 homes.

1. This is a statement of intent. Approving three major energy projects in your first week is about sending a message. The last Conservative government deferred these decisions till after the election. In the case of Sunnica, they left the project’s developers waiting for over a year once the Planning Inspectorate had finished their examination.

2. The speed matters more than the decision. I suspect the Conservatives would almost certainly have eventually approved at least two of these projects and probably approved all three. However, the electoral timing and the location of the solar farms (all in relatively safe Conservative/Liberal Democrats seats) made delay an appealing choice for the last government. Approving all three straight after the election will still send a strong signal about the government’s priorities.

3. Getting more solar online will require further reforms. To get approval, Sunnica’s developers produced a 69,173 page planning application, including an almost 15,000 page environmental impact assessment. The Development Consent Order process for energy infrastructure is so burdensome that developers are deliberately keeping their projects small to avoid being dragged into it. The requirement to do extensive (and often unnecessary) archaeological trenching is another issue that needs to be addressed.

4. Oh the hypocrisy! In the case of Sunnica, East Cambridgeshire and Suffolk County Councils were both opposed to the project and argued it should not go ahead. One asks how they square this opposition with the fact they both declared a climate emergency.

5. There was an immediate backlash from local MPs (none of which are Labour). Within minutes of the news dropping, directly affected MPs immediately took to X/Twitter to criticise the decision. From the Conservatives, MPs Nick Timothy, Alicia Kearns, and Sir Edward Leigh all spoke out. (As did Rishi’s former Deputy Head of Policy Will Tanner). From the Liberal Democrats, new MP Charlotte Cane voiced her disapproval. 

6. “But, the Examining Authority said reject it.” Despite being from different parties, Cane and Timothy relied on the same argument – the Examining Authority (the state-appointed experts who review planning applications) recommended rejection. Yet, having the final decision resting with an elected official, not a quangocrat, was a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition policy. Regardless, the application was recommended for refusal before the Conservatives put in place a new National Policy Statement granting ‘Critical National Priority’ to low-carbon energy projects. It is highly plausible that the Examining Authority would take a very different view as a result.

7. This isn’t unusual. Ministers, by the way, often overrule the Examining Authority. Hornsea Three offshore wind farm was approved despite the Examining Authority recommending rejection. The same happened with Sizewell C with its 44,000 page environmental impact assessment.

8. “How can Ed Miliband have read all the relevant documents?” Alicia Kearns MP writes: ”With 93 documents in the decision subfolder for Mallard Pass alone, let alone the other two projects, I struggle to believe the Secretary of State has engaged with the detail or read all of the documentation and representations.” Our planning system is so bureaucratic that almost no one will have read everything pertaining to a case. Do we really expect Transport Secretary Louise Haigh to read all 359,000 pages of the Lower Thames Crossing’s application too? Requiring Secretaries of State to have individually read every document is a recipe for stasis and indecision.

9. What about losing farmland? Most objections to solar farms come down to concerns about losing farmland. But, I just don’t think the numbers add up. My colleague Ben Hopkinson runs the numbers in a new blog post.
   
   “The Government has a target to increase solar power to 70 GW by 2035. Solar technology will improve over this time, which will allow more energy to be generated from the same amount of land. The amount of power that a single panel can generate has almost doubled in the past decade. But even if we assumed no efficiency gains, that 70 GW (still assuming ⅔ ground mounted), would take up approximately 1,133 sq km. 
   
   “That sounds like a lot, but it is still only about 0.46% of the UK’s land, and still less than 1% of farmland.”

10. And China? One argument that Alicia Kearns offered for rejecting Mallard Pass was that some of the solar panels may have been made with forced Uyghur labour. This is clearly a serious issue, but it’s a matter for foreign or trade policy not an individual planning application.

11. We’ll see you in court. Multiple MPs suggested that the battle is not over and that they will seek to challenge the decision in the courts. If they do and do so on environmental grounds (e.g. impact on landscapes), they will benefit from the Aarhus Cost Protection caps and can’t be countersued for more than £5,000 if unsuccessful. Ed Miliband will soon find out the ease of taking infrastructure projects to court can threaten his energy plans.

12. The fundamental problem. Ultimately, every planning decision is a judgment about costs and benefits. Yet too often we only hear from the people who lose out, the people with affected views for instance, we don’t hear the voice of the millions of people who want cheaper clean domestic power. These three approvals in spite of local opposition are a reminder that the latter count too.