Ground-mounted Solar Panels: Alternatives

Michael Shanks Excerpts

Tuesday 14th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[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.

[Michael Shanks]

I will come on to that point.

[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.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

rose—

[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.