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Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of alternatives to ground mounted solar panels.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I sensed the people coming into the Chamber in the last couple of minutes and I felt a quickening. It was like energy coming together, which is completely appropriate given what we are here to debate: alternatives to land-based solar panels.
The context in which I wish to couch this debate is twofold. One aspect is local and one slightly more geostrategic. People say that in politics, where you sit defines where you stand. Hon. Members may or may not know that I am the proud Member of Parliament for Spelthorne. I sometimes feel the need to remind hon. Members that Spelthorne is not in Lincolnshire or Lancashire; it is, in fact, everything south of Heathrow airport until hon. Members get to the River Thames.
When I was elected, at the last election, to be the Member for Spelthorne, I looked at a very big map of the constituency—hon. Members will be very surprised to learn that I used to be in the Army, and there used to be a very good saying in the Army: “If you don’t know what’s going on, get a bigger map”—and I identified four enormous blocks of blue. That was half of London’s drinking water in four raised reservoirs. Being a practical man, I thought to myself, “Well, there aren’t many votes in there.” I also thought to myself that we cannot really build many homes there.
I did further research and it turns out that in 2016, on the Queen Elizabeth reservoir in a neighbouring constituency, a large technology demonstrator for floating solar was laid down, and ever since it has produced 6.3 MW of power—enough to power about 2,000 homes. That was at the time the largest one in Europe; back in 2016, we were leading. I looked into the situation further in order to see whether we were world-leading, but it turns out that we were not particularly, and that floating solar has been deployed to a greater extent in China, India, Vietnam and Israel. We will come in due course to the benefits of floating solar as an alternative to land-based systems.
I want now to return to the more national context. Frequently, we are led to believe that alternative sources of energy can be something of a zero-sum game—when someone takes one step forward, someone else has to take one step backwards. As I am sure we will hear, in large parts of the United Kingdom there are proposed large, land-based solar farms, frequently on very good agricultural land, so the zero-sum game between food security and energy security needs unpicking.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member on bringing forward a debate on this massive issue. Is he aware that there are roughly 600,000 acres of unused, south-facing industrial rooftops in the United Kingdom that could be utilised before we industrialise the countryside? The Government must look at those in order to utilise already built heritage and leave our countryside as it is to produce the food that we need.
Lincoln Jopp
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I hope other Members will come forward with their own preferred alternatives to land-based systems, because there are others.
Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a characteristically brilliant speech—the jokes get better each time we hear them. Does he agree that there are other types of provision? My area of interest is space-based solar power provision, which could provide the same sorts of solutions without taking up precious agricultural land.
Lincoln Jopp
As the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my hon. Friend is only too well placed to talk about that. As his Whip, I can only say that his jokes get better too.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
On the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) made, I can say that when I was the Minister for Space, I strongly supported space solar, which is a genuinely exciting British breakthrough.
My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) is making a really important point about food security. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on science and technology in agriculture, I know that we are hugely vulnerable to the geopolitics of the strait of Hormuz and global supply chains more broadly, so we need to do more to support UK agricultural production. In my patch, we have an 8,000-acre solar farm on farmland, which will see good, productive land taken out. This Friday, I am chairing the Central Norfolk Solar Factory Farm Alliance. We are very keen to see solar on reservoirs, motorways, council buildings—on any surfaces we can—but not on good farmland.
Lincoln Jopp
And there we see the battle. Without wishing to get into other controversial areas, it is a little like proposals to build on green belt. If everything else were built on first and we protected the green belt, we would be a richer country.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
South Derbyshire has two grid connections and gets a plethora of applications for solar and battery energy storage systems—it is the bane of my life. I am passionate about moving to renewables. I have just got an electric car, and it is helping me keep my energy costs down for the journeys that I need to make, particularly in the light of what is happening with Iran.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for securing this debate on alternatives, but does he agree that it is not quite as straightforward as we think? We need to do this quite speedily. People assume that putting solar panels on industrial sites is easy, but we still need to be able to connect them to the grid, which is being upgraded in my neck of the woods. Does he agree that, much as we desperately want alternatives, there is not a sliver bullet to get us there?
Lincoln Jopp
The hon. Lady makes a really important point. One of the massive delays in deploying solar power is the requirement to achieve planning permission, and I am so pleased that she has brought that up. One of the beauties of floating solar is that if the owner of the reservoir or former quarry will use the electricity themselves, there is no requirement for planning permission. In terms of speed to deployment, return on investment and speed to profit, this is to a certain extent an answer to a maiden’s prayer.
We have not yet added in the third element of this battle between food security and energy security: water security. I believe in climate change. I am more sceptical about carbon neutrality within a certain arbitrary timeline, but the fact is that evaporation is a massive issue as the world warms up. One of the stunning and much less vaunted benefits of floating solar is that it reduces evaporation by 70%. Australia is very expensively covering reservoirs in anti-evaporation covers, but those could be floating solar panels.
I can sense the mood of the Chamber—hon. Members are very keen for me to list the other benefits, so I will do just that. The first, which we have talked about, is that floating solar comes with none of the opportunity costs of putting solar panels on grade A agricultural land, so we can move the debate on from whether we have to choose between energy security and food security.
Secondly, because of the effect on evaporation, floating solar also moves the debate on from the need for water security and energy security. Another stunning benefit is that it is twice as efficient as land-based systems. We would need only half the amount of floating solar as we would need solar covering Lincolnshire or Suffolk agricultural land. Hon. Members who remember their O-level physics will know that the evaporative effect on the underside of the floating solar panel makes it self-cooling, whereas land-based and roof-based systems and those in railway sidings simply get hotter through the working day and become less efficient.
“What about the water in these reservoirs? Surely, Lincoln, this can’t be as good as it sounds?” Well, it gets better, especially if the reservoir is to be used for drinking water further downstream. Denuded of heat and light, those things that grow in reservoirs that subsequently have to be filtered out, very expensively, by the water companies cannot grow. It is win-win-win all round.
Let us leave 2016, when we were Europe’s leaders, and fast-forward to last year. If ever there was a way to motivate Members of the House of Commons, it is to suggest that the French are beating us at something. Bear in mind the 6.3 MW—enough to power 2,000 homes—on the Queen Elizabeth reservoir. Last year, a plant on a disused quarry in Perthes, France became fully operational. It generates 75 MW.
I visited a former dock in Barrow-in-Furness where a 45 MW site is planned. It has to go through planning because BAE Systems will take the electricity. I would relax the permitted development right to include third-party use of the electricity, so that we can realise the benefits and improve the business case of floating solar to entertain the sort of investment it would need. I think there are 570 reservoirs in this country, and there is floating solar on one—the Queen Elizabeth. Ten further projects are planned. We also have innumerable former quarries and unused ports such as at Barrow. The opportunity is huge; we are talking terawatts. If it is realised, floating solar could generate 1% of UK baseload.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) mentioned space. Clearly, that would be phenomenal. Dare I say that it behoves the Government to look at this in a more strategic way than hitherto? They published their long-awaited solar road map. It has about 94 pages, and about half a page and a photo are dedicated to floating solar, which they describe as a “nascent” technology. I hope that I have shown that it is not nascent at all; it has been with us for quite some time.
Last August I stood on top of the Golan heights, looking down towards Syria, and saw two enormous reservoirs that were almost completely covered with floating solar panels. We should look to hotter and more arid countries for our sense of where we should take our innovation and technology. My plea to the House and the Government is this: look again at the potential for floating solar. When it comes to energy security, food security and water security, it provides a non-ideological, highly practical solution—a NIHPS—without papering over the beautiful parts of England.
By the way, all the reservoirs in my constituency are raised, so this solution comes with none of the visual vandalism of our country being carpeted in solar panels, to which people object so much. The tops of those reservoirs can be seen only by people taking off from or landing at Heathrow. The hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) is quite right: nothing is as simple or as perfect as it might first sound. I do not envy her having two grid plug-in points—she will be one of the most popular Members of Parliament going. But if we can, we must examine floating solar in greater detail, because it could, to a certain extent, produce a valuable alternative diversification of our energy supply in a world that is becoming ever more dangerous and insecure.
Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) for securing this important debate. I have heard the statistic that for all the land allocations that have been set aside for housing, for growing food and for renewable energy projects, and for all the other demands on the scarce land mass that we have at our disposal on this small and increasingly crowded island, we would need another two Waleses. Clearly, they are not making land any more, so how can we get better use out of the square mileage that we have at our disposal?
Ground-mounted solar gives a single purpose to land. Yes, it possibly gives some biodiversity gain; yes, it is maybe possible to graze sheep around solar panels, although I have yet to see it in reality; but generally it is a single purpose for that piece of land. How can we make better use of our land? As the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne suggested, we can put solar panels on reservoirs and on rooftops. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) will point out that that is a much more expensive way of installing solar panels—we have had that conversation before—but I would like to ask where the profits go. A 2,000-acre solar farm, Lime Down, is planned for my constituency. It is 100% owned by Macquarie. Hon. Members might be aware that Macquarie was the owner of Thames Water during the time that that company was loaded up with debt. It is a financial institution, not a utility-owning institution, so the profits from the solar farm will not go to local people; they will go to Australia.
What does good look like, if we are to meet our large and increasing energy needs while also bringing the public along on our journey towards net zero? It is important to the project that there be public support, not public alienation. Smaller-scale schemes can and do work. In my constituency there are successful schemes in Long Newnton and Corston. The principles are clear: projects that are community-led are more likely to have community buy-in, as are those that are modest in scale, that are sensitively sited and that deliver direct local benefits.
I welcome the Government’s support for community solar, including the funding that has reached groups such as Zero North Wiltshire, but we need to go further. Many communities are willing and able to participate. The local power plan and investment through Great British Energy are welcome steps, but they fall short. The Government are proposing about £1 billion for local and community energy; the Liberal Democrats have set out a plan for £3.3 billion. That difference matters. Our approach would scale up community energy into a core part of the energy system, not just a niche add-on. More than 100 MPs have backed reform through early-day motion 2151, so there is clear cross-party support for the right to local supply.
I would like to see the missing piece put in place: community supply licences, peer-to-peer trading and reformed licence exemptions. Of course, ground-mounted solar has a role in the transition to net zero, but it needs to be done right. The tests are simple: is there genuine consultation, real local benefit and protection of our landscape? If we get this right, solar can power our future. If we get it wrong, it will divide the very communities we need to bring with us.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. We are focusing on the concept of floating solar, which I am entirely behind. One of the drivers for that is the proposal in my constituency for the Green Hill solar farm, which will be enormous. It will be 1,200 hectares of agricultural land: the size—my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) will like this reference—of Heathrow airport. It will be dispersed over nine sites, require 31 km of different cabling, and use up 65% of best and most versatile land. The Government say that food security is national security, but such a scheme flies in the face of that message. Even the national policy framework EN-1 says that we must minimise the impact on BMV, yet such a scheme is going before the Secretary of State in the next few months. I really hope that he considers that, because this is not the best way to be utilising our land.
Green Hill solar farm will also have a battery energy storage system, which will be installed right outside a village called Grendon. Grendon already has a 50 MW battery storage site, and another 50 have been approved by the Reform council—I am surprised about that, given its view on battery energy storage, but there we are. However, this solar farm will require a further 500 MW on top. That will be 600 MW of storage outside a beautiful country village. It is completely inappropriate for the size. The developers have probably cited the existing source as their reason. However, this addition will completely change the nature of the villages, and we still have not been able to get an answer to the question, if there is a fire and there is a risk of thermal runaway, what that will mean for the nearby villages? I have been told that they can simply evacuate a village; that is not practical, it is not pragmatic and it does not give our residents any confidence in the scheme that is going forward.
The beauty of floating solar, as my hon. Friend said, is that there will be no land use change, which is one of the most important parts of this. It is also important that there will be no evaporation of the water, which is excellent. One of the objections is the visual impact of solar. The national policy framework EN-1 says that we have to take account of the heritage of an area. This particular solar farm will be around a series of beautiful English countryside villages with rolling hills. The village of Easton Maudit will be surrounded by solar on three sides. That will completely change the nature and experience of the village. Indeed, Sir Christopher Yelverton, a former Speaker of the House—albeit from the 16th century —is buried in one of the fine churches there; I imagine that he would not be delighted by the prospect of this coming on board. There is an important relationship between maintaining the heritage of our areas and the environment that we are in.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend is exactly right, and I share her frustration. In my constituency, there is a large area of protected national landscape, the North Wessex downs national park, which is constantly under threat from these kinds of proposals. Does she share my frustration at the lack of imagination shown in the UK? The A303 and the A34 run through my constituency, and there are tens of miles of embankment that could be used for solar panels. That is the approach they take in Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere, but we never seem to get over the imagination gap about where we could put these things—floating or whatever—that may not be quite so damaging and intrusive. She probably has parts of the M1 in her constituency, which has endless miles of embankment that could be used for solar panels that could power her constituency and mine without harming any visual amenity whatsoever.
Sarah Bool
I entirely agree, and we have been trying to promote that argument. It has unfortunately been claimed that Northamptonshire could become the warehousing capital of the UK, but we should be using the roadsides. We sometimes see airports using the side banks for solar panels. Solar panels should be installed on the covers of petrol stations and on the roofs of warehouses. I know that the last Government were consulting on whether more warehouse space could be used. I know that some people make technical arguments that the roofs are not strong enough and cannot be reinforced, but that is absolute nonsense. We can definitely work to ensure that the roofs are sturdy enough for solar panels.
There is debate about whether it should be the landlord or the tenant who bears the cost of the initial outlay, and about who gets the benefit. All those things are completely surmountable, and we should be able to work on a programme for that going forward. It all goes back to planning, because meaningful requirements could enable solar power generation. I am often concerned that these initiatives end up just being greenwashing and that we are only putting them in place to be able to tick a box. What we want to see is these schemes being meaningfully integrated.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a great speech about the importance of thinking about things strategically. Does she agree that if one was thinking about the strategic placement of ground-mounted solar, one would not put it on the best and most versatile farmland that we have for food security?
Sarah Bool
Absolutely. It certainly should not be put there, and the national planning policy framework states we should not be doing that. I therefore find it quite extraordinary that we are still having debates on this issue. There are certainly other alternatives, and they must be explored, so I really do hope that the Government take this issue seriously as it progresses over the years.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
I feel that we are slightly misrepresenting the argument. There is no debate about choosing between food security and energy security. The National Farmers Union states that if solar capacity were to increase fivefold by 2035, we would still only see 0.5% of UK agricultural land covered by ground-mounted solar farms. Is it not the case that we are creating a false debate, or does she think that the National Farmers Union is wrong?
Sarah Bool
I am not debating the National Farmers Union; I am saying that we should not be putting farmers in this position. I would not blame any farmer trying to make a bit of extra money from solar, particularly since the current environment is very difficult for them. The problem is that ground-mounted solar is not the best use of that land in any event. Agricultural land should be used for exactly that—agriculture.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I am afraid to say that I think the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) has completely missed the point, because the reality is that this country is about 60% to 63% self-sufficient in terms of food security. This is not just about land being taken out of production; it is also about the long-term degradation of the health of the soil on which the solar is being mounted, because of issues such as shading, reduced rainfall, construction-related compaction issues, reduced organic matter and contamination risks. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just about taking the land out of production but about the long-term degradation of soil health once the land comes back into agricultural production—if it ever does—after the solar agreement of 40 years or so has elapsed?
Sarah Bool
Absolutely, and that is one of the arguments that we were trying to make in the hearing against the Green Hill proposal, which is for 60 years. We cannot see the justification for that. There will be a renewal right, no doubt, and even within those 60 years, the solar panels will be degraded from rain and we will not know what the run-off will cause. There are so many factors that we do not know about, and I want to ensure that we have good-quality agricultural land for the future.
Tom Hayes
I do not want us to keep talking around each other, but the hon. Lady is missing the point again about the quantity of agricultural land that can be taken out of agricultural use. Reference has been made to the idea that the UK would be carpeted with ground-mounted solar panels. That is not going to happen. We can support the goal of food security and we can support the goal of energy security, but we do not need to misrepresent the extent to which agricultural land will be taken out of use for that purpose.
Sarah Bool
I think it is about the quality of the land that is being used. It might be a small amount, but if it is very good-quality agricultural land—as 65% of it is, according to what I have here—the hon. Member’s point does not stand up on that front. We just have to be very realistic about it, because there are many different factors. The hon. Member could say that a huge proportion of the country is taken up with golf courses, and say, “Well, we don’t take that away,” but what we are saying is that this is a fix that is very popular.
Solar does not necessarily work all the time. The actual amount of energy generated is a very small proportion. Sometimes it can work only 10% of the time. It does not work during the night, and there are other issues about the transmission of the energy itself, because of the times of the day that can be used. That raises questions about the grid capacity and the grid connections.
George Freeman
On the important point that the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) made about connections, what we are discovering in Norfolk is that the grid connection investment is an open door to much bigger solar applications. We have an 8,000-acre one that I am dealing with today. Land agents tell me that 20,000 acres in Norfolk are now being released because we have the grid connection. Much of that will be good land. The danger is that the connectivity driving the investment means, unfortunately, that the land use argument gets distorted.
Sarah Bool
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I think it also speaks to a wider issue about efficiency in the use of land. The EN-1 national policy statement says that we must be efficient in the use of natural resources, including land use itself. I think it is apt that we talk about floating solar, because we are not taking out agricultural land; we are using land that is serving one purpose but can legitimately serve another without disruption.
Samantha Niblett
One of the biggest concerns, particularly for my tenant farmers, is that when there is a change of land use for a solar farm, not only is the farmer unable to farm that land, but they do not have a farm—they are losing the farm. Does the hon. Lady agree?
Sarah Bool
Absolutely. It completely changes the nature of the relationship. We know that our farmers are already having a challenging time because of Government policies that are coming in; the inheritance tax changes have been devastating for our farming community. This is a point at which we should be supporting them. Part of that support is about saying that actually we need to be building reservoirs. On-farm reservoirs are going to be very important; again, that is a part of the planning system that we need to change and push through.
I do not want farmers to feel that they should or must go for solar applications in this instance, where actually the entirety of their farmland is taken out of use. The devastating thing about this policy is that a farmer whose family has been farming for generations—generations of them are buried at the Easton Maudit church—has had his tenancy ended and is already out, in anticipation of the policy coming in. Hundreds of years of a farming dynasty have been taken away.
This is not what the Government want to be doing, and it is not where we should be going. We should be encouraging farming, keeping our beautiful countryside, and using the alternatives. As I say, there are plenty, whether that is on top of warehousing spaces or on the sides of roofs.
Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)
Glastonbury and Somerton is home to more than 800 farms, many of which have appropriate buildings for housing rooftop solar panels, for example. That would meet some of our net zero targets and allow some of the fertile land, which she has already spoken about, to be prioritised, properly and rightly, for food production. Does she agree that we must expand the incentives for our farmers to install rooftop solar panels, including guaranteeing a fair price for electricity that is sold back into the grid?
Sarah Bool
I thank my fellow member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for making those points. Yes, all the different incentives matter. In the farming environment, our farmers have struggled with a lack of certainty. With the removal of the sustainable farming incentive and with the capping and closure of all the different funds, there has been no certainty. In an industry that requires certainty, they cannot just suddenly change a crop halfway through. They have to rely on security, and it has not been delivered so far. We need to do whatever we can to put in place long-term guarantees of funding and make sure that they realise that they are secure for the future.
Dr Caroline Johnson
My hon. Friend is being exceptionally generous with her time. Does she have any comment on the scale of some of these proposals? My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) talked about an 8,000-acre proposal, and 9,340 acres are currently open to planning in my area. It can be quite difficult to appreciate quite how big that is, so for the Minister’s benefit let me say that the constituency of Rutherglen stands at a total of 10,230 acres. That means that the solar farms planned in my constituency would cover 91% of his area.
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
Order. Two hon. Members have intervened after coming late to the debate. As a courtesy to the Chair and Members, they really should send a note. I have had a note from another hon. Member who wishes to intervene, who has done things properly and has not yet intervened. I say that to hon. Members for this debate and for future reference.
Sarah Bool
Thank you, Mr Stringer.
These sizes are huge. As I say, the solar farm in my constituency will be the size of Heathrow airport. If this application goes through, more than 1% of my constituency will be covered in solar farms. That is not what we anticipated, and it is not the vision that I have for the future. We have far better alternatives. It is important that we move the debate on, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne has done, to thinking about floating solar.
This is not about our party saying no to renewables or to any other alternatives, because that is not realistic. We need an incredibly good, diverse energy mix. What we are saying is that we should not do that to the detriment of our farms and our farming community and good-quality agricultural land. Solar has many great advantages. I wish I could trade my scheme for the one suggested by my hon. and gallant Friend. That would be far better and I am sure it would be much more appreciated by residents, constituents and the British public.
Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on securing this important debate.
I confess that I had prepared to do far more debunking of climate-denying nonsense, given some of the statements by the hon. and gallant Member’s party leader, so I was relieved to hear his very impressive and science-based speech. I support a lot of what he said. The only note that I wrote myself was to say that we do not need to worry that solar panels start to lose efficiency above an ambient air temperature of 25°C, which is a fairly infrequent event in the UK. I totally accept his point about the efficiency of putting solar on water.
If the constituents of the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) have concerns about battery energy storage systems fires, she should point out to them that there have only been about 30 BESS-linked fires globally in the last 15 years. It is actually incredibly safe.
The point about rooftops is about prefab buildings—the large warehouses. The roofs have an insurable lifespan of about 15 years, whereas solar panels have a 30-year lifespan, so we need to change the building regulations, as has been said.
That is all a long-winded way of saying, that prior to getting elected, I spent 10 years working in the renewable energy sector, so I have a particular passion for this subject. I am also the chair of the ClimateTech all-party parliamentary group and co-chair of the net zero all-party parliamentary group. I hope that the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne will forgive me if I expand a little on the technological options available outside floating solar.
We face a worsening climate crisis, with more frequent extreme weather events affecting communities in West Dorset and across the UK, as well as being in the middle of a cost of living crisis, with families facing high food, fuel and energy bills, compounded by the illegal conflict started by the President of the United States. About 15% of households in West Dorset rely on heating oil, and many do not qualify for the support that has been announced. Petrol and diesel prices are rising. Red diesel for farmers has doubled in price. Fertiliser prices are rising, too, which will feed through to food prices.
As a result, it has never been more important to make renewables work for working families. That is not because they are cleaner and more secure than fossil fuels, although we know that they are, but because they are the cheapest form of energy available. New solar now costs 11% less than the cheapest fossil fuel to generate electricity. Onshore wind is 39% cheaper. Over a decade ago, only 6% of the UK’s electricity came from renewables. Today, it is 42%. On Sunday, renewables generated 62% of the UK’s electricity, of which solar produced 8.8%. We should be enormously proud of that, but while renewables are getting cheaper, people are not seeing the benefit in their bills. Under the current marginal pricing system, the price of electricity is set by the cost of gas. That means that when global gas prices go up, electricity bills go up too, regardless of how much renewable power, or power of any kind, we are generating domestically. That system has left the UK with the fourth highest electricity prices in the world. It is not working for households or for businesses.
Let us be clear that the answer to energy insecurity is not more dependence on oil and gas; it is more cheap British renewable energy. Under the clean power 2030 action plan, the Government want 95% of Britain’s electricity to come from clean sources by 2030—a noble endeavour. To get there, the Government plan to increase solar capacity to between 45 GW and 47 GW by 2030. That will require doubling our capacity.
Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)
When alternatives are not available, building solar farms, as Leonardo is doing in Yeovil, can be important to strengthening grid capacity for businesses and residents. When the site in Yeovil is working fully, there is not enough power in the grid for other businesses to expand. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to make sure that we have alternatives and get more solar out there to power our businesses?
Edward Morello
My hon. Friend is 100% right. Wherever possible, we should generate and use on site. The problem so often—I will come to this point in my speech—is that the value of anything that is exported to the grid fundamentally underlines any kind of investment model when we are looking at on-site generation.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I sent a note, which you were kind enough to mention, Mr Stringer, to apologise for entering the debate late, but I am delighted to be able to contribute.
The hon. Gentleman must surely know that renewables need to face the same tests of cost-effectiveness as all other kinds of generation. For example, the concentration of offshore wind, with very large turbines, a single point of connection to the grid and large amounts of energy, contrasts with the peppering of the country with onshore turbines in small numbers and with multiple connections to the grid. Similarly, putting solar on grade 1 land is just not sensible. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?
Edward Morello
I can certainly agree with the argument that putting solar on grade 1 land should be avoided wherever possible. The right hon. Gentleman may be interested in the recent report of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy on our adversaries’ attempts to cut subsea cables, and on the implicit danger of having so few connection points with such concentrated areas of offshore generation, as we have seen with recent Russian activity. I will happily pick up that point with him afterwards.
About two thirds of UK solar capacity is ground-mounted, but there are concerns about where developments are located, particularly those built on high-quality agricultural land. I echo the comments of the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool): I have never met a farmer, especially in West Dorset, who got into farming because they wanted to grow solar panels. Farmers want to produce food, but we must acknowledge that after years of pressure on farm incomes and pressure on them by this Government, some see solar as one of the few reliable ways to keep their farm operating.
We are asking more and more of our countryside. We want it to produce food, support biodiversity, generate renewable energy, capture carbon, provide housing, and support tourism and recreation. We need guidance to identify where solar is most appropriate, steer it away from the best agricultural land wherever possible, and encourage dual-use schemes that allow land to generate energy while still supporting farmers and nature—
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) for securing this important debate and for setting out, with his inimitable style and élan, a persuasive argument about how we balance energy generation with the protection of the countryside and the benefits of floating solar, which is a subject close to his heart and about which he is incredibly passionate.
I congratulate the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage), my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool), my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) on speaking or intervening in the debate. I was, however, going to accuse my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) of inadvertently misleading the House when he suggested that the jokes of our hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne were getting better every time he heard them.
This debate is not about whether solar should be built in the UK. His Majesty’s official Opposition are absolutely clear that solar does have a role to play. The question is where solar belongs and whether the Government are making sensible choices about how much to rely on that method of electricity generation. Under this Government, we are seeing a rapid expansion of large-scale ground-mounted solar developments on productive agricultural land. Tens of thousands of acres are being removed from food production, often with limited local benefit and little regard for the impact on land use and food security, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire set out so eloquently.
Good agricultural land is a finite national asset, and the foundation of our food security and rural economy. Once it is taken out of use and industrialised, it is rarely, if ever, returned to productive farming. At a time of global uncertainty and rising food costs, it is profoundly short-sighted to undermine domestic food production and the livelihoods it supports in pursuit of energy targets that could be achieved in less damaging, more efficient ways, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), who is more knowledgeable about issues pertaining to agriculture than I could ever be, set out.
The push to install solar panels on farmland is yet another blow to farmers and rural communities. Labour’s promises to protect rural life have proven empty, with new measures making it harder for family farms to survive and plan for the future. The result is a weakening of our rural economy, and a threat to the future of British farming and our food security.
Rural businesses and communities are raising serious objections, not because they oppose clean energy but because they are being asked to carry a disproportionate burden on their shoulders. In one of her last actions in government, the now shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), changed planning guidance to make sure that the cumulative effects of lots of applications in one rural area were considered together, not just waved through the planning system, and that food security held as much importance as energy security when it came to those decisions. Since coming into government, however, Labour has been approving every single application wherever it can, no matter the impact on local communities, and it has watered down the community benefit scheme that we put in place to make sure that communities are rewarded for hosting this energy infrastructure.
There are also serious questions about efficiency and value for money. Just this week, the National Energy System Operator—NESO—has warned that solar panels could produce more electricity in the summer months than the public could consume. To combat that, one of NESO’s suggestions is for consumers to increase their electricity use, with NESO even rewarding them for doing so through a demand flexibility service. Our electricity system should suit the needs of the people, not require consumers to change their behaviour to suit the energy system.
This situation exposes the limitations of relying too heavily on intermittent sources of energy such as solar and wind. Those technologies can play a limited supporting role, but true energy security requires a balanced portfolio that includes sources that deliver reliable, year-round baseload power. NESO has rightly advised that we need a flexible system that matches supply to demand and protects against volatility.
Sarah Bool
I want to make a point about volatility. With the unpredictable way in which solar is adopted, there is a danger that we will end up making compensation payments. When the sun is not shining, we may have to turn off panels and give huge amounts in compensation. That is another dynamic that we have to think about: it is an unreliable and unpredictable source of energy.
Andrew Bowie
As ever, I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, who makes a very important point.
Britain is an island nation with more than 40,000 lakes, lochs and reservoirs. We have led the world in offshore energy for decades, be that oil and gas or offshore wind. Floating solar, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne suggests, should be explored to see how it might contribute to a future system without displacing food production or industrialising the great British countryside.
Despite the potential of such exciting technologies, the Government are going hell for leather towards onshore wind at the expense of all else, and greenfield solar is being waved through planning systems with alarming speed against the wishes of local communities across the country. The Conservative party continues to support solar on people’s rooftops and on top of warehouses, car parks, brownfield sites and other common-sense locations that do not harm our countryside, food production or rural livelihoods. What we oppose is the Government’s apparent willingness to sacrifice productive farmland.
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
Order. Before the Minister starts his speech, I remind him to leave a couple of minutes at the end for the Member in charge to wind up.
The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on securing it, particularly because I unfortunately missed his Adjournment debate, which I heard was one of the most enthusiastic Adjournment debates we have ever had on this topic. I was delighted to hear him repeat much of that same speech, because I did of course read it in Hansard. The map joke was there in the Adjournment debate, and it was there again today. We appreciated it all the same, and it was great to hear it in person. I thank him for securing the debate, and I genuinely thank him for the enthusiasm he has shown for floating solar. I will come back to that in a moment.
I was also pleased to hear the hon. and gallant Member say that he believes in climate change. That should not be breaking news to anyone, but when we hear Conservative Members stand up and confirm that science is in fact science, it is none the less a relief to me. I was delighted to hear that. However, the challenge—and I will come back to this point—is that, as much as there is a recognition that climate change is a threat, there is also a distancing from any of the actions that would help us to tackle it, and that is simply not a sustainable position for anyone to hold.
If we think about food security, water security and national security, all of them would be put at huge risk by not tackling the climate crisis. This is a very real challenge for us to deal with at the moment. That more dangerous and insecure world is exactly why we are embarking on the clean power mission.
Sir John Hayes
While the Minister is on the subject of science, would he turn his attention to agronomy? He will know that only around 15% of the land in the United Kingdom is grade 1 and 2. Much of that is in the east of England and, indeed, in my constituency in Lincolnshire. Lincolnshire has been targeted by solar developers, with countless large solar plans in the offing. Will the Minister recognise that those two things cannot be squared? We cannot have the most productive and versatile land being used up for solar at the cost of our food security.
Michael Shanks
I was going to come to the trading of statistics later in my speech, but let me do it now, because there is a fundamental point around the disingenuous trading of statistics on land use. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) made a valiant effort at trying to correct that, but let me give Members some sense of this. At the end of 2024, ground-mounted solar panels covered an estimated 0.1% of the total land area of the UK. Even if we achieve the ambitious targets that we have set out in the clean power action plan, they will be expected to cover 0.4% of the total land area and 0.6% of agricultural land. That is if we achieve our hugely ambitious targets.
The arguments that I will make in this speech are exactly those that the previous Government made when they spoke from the Dispatch Box. There was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Energy Minister who spoke about the dramatic rise in global energy prices following the invasion of Ukraine, the urgency of building a renewables-based system, and how critical it is for us to meet our 70 GW target for solar in the UK by 2025— the previous Government’s target was a fivefold increase.
The now shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), pretends that that was not the Conservatives policy for 14 years, and we now hear a litany of ideas—roadside solar, rail solar, floating solar—but none of them was driven forward in the 14 years that they were in government. Forgive me if I think that it is a little bit rich for them to be oppositionist, not having driven any of it forward when they were in government.
Dr Caroline Johnson
The Minister is talking about using a very small proportion of the United Kingdom. I understand his point, but when all of that small proportion falls on the best bits of agricultural land, that is not sensible. If one were looking at a strategic framework and desiring to use 0.1% or 0.2% of the country for solar, one would look at the least useful land for food security for doing that, not the best.
Edward Morello
The hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) suggests that we should utilise the least useful land going. My understanding, according to the numbers I have looked at, is that at least 2% of the UK is covered in golf courses, which are ecological wastelands. At the risk of alienating all the golfing voters out there, I wonder whether the Minister would like to use that land.
Michael Shanks
I will not be drawn on golf course membership, because I do not know how many of my constituents are members of golf courses; I can imagine how many Conservative Members are.
I come back to the point about land use, because we absolutely recognise the importance of having a framework for how we use land across the country. That is why the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published the first-ever land use framework in March— I recommend a read of it. It is a vision for all of England’s land use, using the latest data on how much we need for housing, energy and all sorts of things to ensure that we are making the best use of land. Both that and the strategic spatial approach to planning the energy system could have been done in those 14 years, but they were not. That is why we have ended up with a haphazard approach to strategic planning, and why we are now building the grid to connect the renewables that were built all over the country without that spatial plan. It is important that we strategically plan that, and it was not done previously, so we are moving forward to do it.
Robbie Moore
I have read the land use framework. The Minister has hit the nail on the head, because its sole beneficiary is his Department—the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero—and not our farmers or our food security. Can he specifically address the issue of land quality? If we are putting ground-mounted solar on agricultural land, will he at least recognise that that will degrade the quality of the soil health, given the amount of time that those solar panels will be in situ?
Michael Shanks
I will not be able to go into the detail of everyone’s points, but the hon. Member is wrong about the land use framework. Perhaps he should read it again, because it details quite clearly the different land uses across the country. There is always tension about land use—of course there is. That has been true throughout history, and that is why we are strategically planning it.
We are clear that the planning system recognises best use. Every application is considered on its merits; I am not going to be drawn on individual applications, but we have clearly said that ground-mounted solar should be used, wherever possible, not on the best-used land.
Michael Shanks
I am not going to give way to the hon. Lady again because I want to come to floating solar, which the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne eloquently made the case for. I completely agree that it is a hugely exciting technology that we should be expanding, and I also agree that there are none of the trade-offs that there often are in other deployments and that there are huge benefits. He and I have both visited the project at the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir near his constituency. It is a fantastic example of floating solar, which has the benefits of generating clean electricity and retaining water in the reservoir. We want to see how we can also utilise that power to reduce the local demand so that there are some real benefits for local communities.
We are taking forward a number of actions. I am sorry if the hon. and gallant Member thinks that floating solar was not given a prominent enough position in the solar road map, but I assure him it has a prominent enough position on my to-do list. We are driving those key actions forward because there is no reason why we should not be doing that more quickly. There are projects in the pipeline that we will try to support wherever we can.
On the argument that there is a trade-off between that and covering rooftops, reservoirs, motorways or any other space that people can come up with, I am open to all of those ideas. I agree that we should be doing much more on rooftops. The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire made the point about some of the complexities with landlords and tenants. It is complex, but it is not impossible and we need to work our way through dealing with that.
It is important that we recognise the scale of the challenge. The scale of our electricity demand means that we need to see more ground-mounted solar as well; it is not either/or. Rooftop solar is important in our mission, and floating solar will be important, but the deployment of ground-mounted solar will also be important in communities across the country. We want those communities to get a genuine a benefit from it, so the points around locally owned power are critical.
In closing, I recognise that at this moment in particular, the lessons we have to take from the crisis in the middle east is that we need to move further and faster away from reliance on fossil fuels, but we have to take communities with us on that journey as well. That is why I want to see communities owning more of this infrastructure and benefiting from it. We also need to make the argument to everyone in our constituencies that the reason they have been exposed time and again to sky-high energy bills is because of our exposure to a fossil fuel market that we cannot control. There is no shortcut to building a system that protects us from that and there is no option to simply build another system somewhere else. At some point, infrastructure has to be built somewhere, and it is simply not a reasonable argument to say, “I’m in favour of this, but please don’t build it anywhere near me.” We will not embark on that.
The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire kindly referenced the size of my constituency—I do not think I have ever heard the exact number of hectares. The previous Government built one of the biggest onshore wind farms right next to my constituency. I support that; it is the right thing to do for our energy security. If it was right under that Government, it is also right that we build the infrastructure that we need now, bringing communities with us but also being clear that it is the right path for the country and our energy security.
Lincoln Jopp
I am grateful to all hon. Members who have made such powerful contributions. I love the image of the Minister under his bed clothes with a torch reading the Hansard report of my Adjournment debate.
I can see the turning point where floating solar went from a nascent technology to one that the Minister wants to drive further and faster. He made a crucial point about how it is all very well to will the ends, but we need to will the ways and means, and not say, “Not in my back yard”. Floating solar is exactly my way of saying to the farmers in Lincolnshire and hon. Members from great agricultural land, “Yes, in my back yard. In fact, on half of London’s drinking water in the four raised reservoirs in Spelthorne, and in across other raised reservoirs across the country.” We can unpick this constant battle between food, water and energy security, and I am grateful to the House for giving me the opportunity to highlight that.