Harness the power of rooftops

We’d all make ideal places for solar panels: generating energy from our roof tops which are baked in sunshine even when other areas might feel a little grey.  But it costs a lot of money to put in solar panels yourself – money which, due to the ineptitude of the Bank of England’s quantitative easing policy causing interest rates to have to rocket, many of us don’t have.

Instead, Wiltshire is facing its prime agricultural land and historic green spaces being blighted by solar parks.

Those of us who oppose these proposals are not nimbys. The sacrificing of the countryside and of the country’s ability to produce enough food at the alter of Net Zero is being accelerated by the new Secretary of State, Ed Miliband, apparently without thought of the alternatives or the wishes of local people who have to live, day by day, with the infrastructure.  Mr Miliband has insisted that the way to avoid another energy crisis is to get the country off fossil fuels. This means mass, expensive (eyewateringly so) infrastructure which even the co-leader of the Green Party, Adrian Ramsey, opposed in his newly won constituency.  The MP for Waveney Valley campaigned against the installation of over 100 miles of pylons needed to carry power from offshore windfarms despite renewable energy being the core of the party’s policies.  Renewable energy infrastructure, it seems, is not popular with anyone when it covers the landscape.

For Wiltshire, that means not only can we expect the proposed 2000-acre Lime Down Solar Park to be approved but, others to appear in our neighbourhoods, regardless of local opposition.

Within only four days of taking office, Miliband overruled local objections of a 500 megawatt park on the Cambridgeshire-Suffolk border. Independent inspectors had advised against granting the application and all local planning authorities had opposed it. Nevertheless, it’s been given the go-ahead.

The Lime Down proposal in Wiltshire would cover a site larger than Gatwick Airport.  It would be built across six sites, including five in North Wiltshire and one near the Melksham substation.  It also includes a battery storage site near the village of Whitley – something which local residents, the local councillor and the previous MP have argued strongly against.

There are no standards for battery storage in the UK and experts have stressed the risk of solar farms with battery storage containers, pointing out the little research which has been done into battery failure. And should a failure occur, the resulting explosions could release toxic substances into the atmosphere. Hardly good for the environment.

The proposed solar farm at One Tree Hill, a natural monument commemorating the Battle of Waterloo, is another area where important green spaces essential for the community is at risk. It is adjacent to a 200-acre proposed development in Potterne which would see solar panels covering fields which include footpaths and bridleways used by locals and visitors alike.

This is damaging to the environment these renewable energy policies are supposedly trying to protect.

I’m all for using renewable energy in a sustainable way which doesn’t ruin treasured green fields, historical landmarks and blight the lives of people living in the community. It’s also deranged to take farmland away from use when there are alternative sites which could be used for solar panels – and perhaps some of those could be in Doncaster North.

It has become clear, however, that the industry’s preferred locations for solar developments are greenfield sites, and often valuable farmland.  Instead, we should be looking at the 250,000 hectares of south-facing commercial roof space – enough for about 120GW of energy – as well as houses like mine.

Those in favour of solar parks on green fields don’t tell you that we don’t know the impact of how well vegetation grows beneath the solar panels, but the absence of sunlight would suggest it would be less than without imported panels blocking their light. There have not been permissions granted long enough to judge what effect two decades of years in the dark will have on soils and examples from other countries are more like lab experiments than real world data. Now that permissions are being granted for 40 years, and it is said that soon applications will come in for 50, who knows what the land will be like.

The CPRE believe that agricultural land quality should play a part in whether approval is given for solar parks, avoiding grades 1,2 and 3a. We also want 3b included in land which should be reserved for food production.  But the preference must be for those greyfield, brownfield and rooftop sites to be used firstly and for local residents to be consulted and, if necessary, compensated for the impact it may have on their lives. This policy would mean solar energy could be harnessed with very little impact on the landscape, tranquillity and cultural heritage of our county, and beyond.