UK Solar Alliance (UKSA) Mission Statement
The UKSA seeks better energy solutions to safeguard UK farmland and the nations’ natural environment for future generations.
UKSA is a collaboration of volunteer groups representing many thousands of residents in over 120 UK communities, working to preserve UK productive farmland, currently at risk of loss to many forms of solar development – small and utility scale.
The UKSA shares expertise and resources, connects people and communities, and supports Government and industry to do better by delivering smarter, sustainable, solar renewable energy solutions.
The UKSA supports the principle of Net Zero targets AND national Food Security priorities by ensuring local community voices and skills are part of the solution.
UK Solar Alliance
The UK Solar Alliance (UKSA) is a collaboration of over 120 volunteer-run campaign groups who represent thousands of rural residents across the UK facing inappropriate solar plant developments on greenfield sites. Founded in January 2022, most of the schemes within our membership base are on highly productive farmland (including Best and Most Versatile land that is meant to be protected), as well as greenbelt, AONBs and other sensitive landscapes and important wildlife habitats.
The UKSA strongly believes that solar can, and must, be delivered better than this, and in a more sustainable manner. We need to ensure that the UK’s Net Zero ambitions are achieved while preserving our environment, our food security, our heritage, our livelihoods and our well-being. And that of our future generations.
By unlocking the potential of our commercial and domestic rooftops, car park spaces, brownfield sites and making use of infrastructure corridors for solar, we can deliver Net Zero while significantly minimising any harms and with the support of communities.
The unnecessary loss of productive farmland to solar development is not being monitored in the UK, let alone managed. Government departments and planning decision makers are unable to assess the cumulative impacts of such loss across the nation, and the consequential impact this is having on UK food security, future farming industry and livelihoods.
Whilst planning policy has, in theory, been tightened to ensure that ground-mounted solar developments are directed to brownfield sites and poor quality, unproductive land, this hierarchy is not being adhered to. We are facing a substantial loss of some of the UK’s best food producing land to large-scale solar, at a time of global food insecurity. Former Energy Minister, Graham Stuart, recently stated that we have far more solar farm applications in the UK than we will ever need to meet our Net Zero targets. So it is crucial that only the very best quality applications, with negligible harm to communities, food production and wildlife, go ahead.
And we can learn from our neighbouring countries such as Germany who, in 2023 alone, installed 14GW of new solar capacity - quickly and efficiently - and predominantly using rooftop space (almost 70%). In France, all car parks with >80 spaces must have solar installed.
The value of our countryside and heritage cannot be underestimated when it comes to positive health and well-being and sense of identity and place. Once it has gone, it has gone. We don’t need to industrialise vast swathes of rural landscapes to achieve our Net Zero targets. Please help us to ensure that solar is delivered the right way, with community support, and stop the current ‘Wild West’ situation of poor quality and highly damaging ground-mounted solar proposals on inappropriate sites.
Agricultrual Land Classification and Soil Type
The agricultural land classification (ALC) grading was produced in the 1960s, at a time when our eating habits were quite different. Back then people ate more seasonal produce. Now society expects to see produce available all year round.
Much is said about ALC grades. Insimple terms, land is divided into 6categories :Grades 1, 2, 3a, 3b, 4 and 5. According to planning policy, Grades 1, 2 and 3a are considered to be the best soil, known as Best and Most Versatile or BMV.
So, something like Grade 1 soil would be expected to grow a variety of crops in high yields.
But the focus really shouldn't be just on these grades. They present a simplistic understanding of soils. Take, for example, carrots. Carrots can only be grown in a few, very specific, areas in the UK. E.g. a relatively small area along the Suffolk and Cambridgeshire border, and small areas in Nottinghamshire and Lancashire. They cannot be grown widely across the UK, as much land cannot be drilled very early in the season (Feb), nor harvested late in the winter.
If we take away this very specific type of land for development, we cannot simply move carrot production elsewhere. There are Grade 1 land types that cannot support carrots.
Therefore, the type of land and the types of crops it grows is a hugely important factor to consider when looking at food security and real land loss.
Wheat can be grown every year on the same field. Farmers growing vegetables rotate land to minimise pests and diseases, so they will only grow carrots on a piece of land once every 6 years, so a farm with 600 acres will only grow 100 acres of carrots each year.
We hear very misleading statistics about farmland loss only being a small percentage of the UK's total farmland, or that a given ground mounted solar development only represents loss of just a fraction of the UK's Grade 1 farmland. That may be the case, but it does not follow that the crops grown on that land are simply able to be grown elsewhere.
Thus, food security is at very significant risk from large scale ground mounted solar on farmland, despite the claims of the solar industry via their PR agents. The speed at which these proposals are being presented and, critically, the absence of any regulation of this, must be a huge cause for concern.
Bizarrely, the impacts of climate change on global food production are lost in the global rush to mitigate climate change. We absolutely need to preserve food producing land that has resilience to the impacts of climate change. For example, land that can be planted year- round, that drains easily to withstand wetter winters and that is irrigated to combat drought over the drier summers.
Irrigation will be key to mitigate climate change and should be from winter storage, i.e. where water is extracted at times of heavy rain when rivers are full, to help ease flooding, and then stored in reservoirs for when it's needed in the summer.
This kind of irrigated land exists in parts of the UK, including in East Anglia. High quality irrigated farmland that grows a broad range of crops at high yields and can be planted on year-round. But this is being gobbled up by solar developments. And clearly gobbled up without consideration of any sound evidence of the actual consequences upon food security.
If soil types and crop types and resiliency to climate change impacts are not considered, and not protected or regulated, then the UK’s food security will indeed be in jeopardy.
There is currently no Government monitoring of land type being lost to large scale ground mounted solar development. As a result, BMV land is regularly used for such proposals despite commitments from the solar industry to avoid this. Solar can be deployed elsewhere (rooftops, car parks, brownfield land, Infrastructure Corridors, land of genuinely poor agricultural / ecological value). It does not need to be on productive farmland (or indeed, on Greenbelt, cf; Botley West proposal in West Oxfordshire).
The cumulative impacts of the large numbers (over 800) ground mounted solar schemes in the pipeline (over and above the 100’s of ground mounted solar schemes in operation) are not currently being taken into account.
Also, consider that when you're taking away land from food production, it's not just the crops that are lost for 40+ years. The irrigation systems that farmers invest thousands of pounds into will also be lost. There not easily reinstated and are very costly to install. Winter fill reservoirs were created with grants from the government.
Packing of crops for supermarkets requires hugely expensive packing lines which need throughput to be economic. Fragmentation of crop growing areas will mean more miles travelled to packing plants. The overall carbon cost of that must also be factored in to consideration; if it is not, then this generation will be leaving an appalling legacy for future generations.
In reality, it is not just a case of saying its OK to lose 50 hectares of land here and there, because it is not a given that alternative land can be found to sustain the crops that will be lost, nor that they will be in close proximity to packing plants.
Demands on land are not just housing or other developments. There are grade 1 and 2 soils in the Fens for example, that are excellent carbon stores. These may well be taken out of production to act as carbon sinks. If such land is taken out of food production to help our Net Zero goals, then we must think very carefully about other land demands that can be deployed elsewhere (i.e. solar!).
It is vital to note that Infrastructure Corridors are nearly always skirted by land; European neighbours have, in some countries, mandated that ground mounted solar is placed along such corridors.......
We cannot afford to keep losing farmland in an unsustainable, unregulated manner. We urgently need a properly informed, sensible solar strategy that prioritises rooftops, car parks, Infrastructure Corridors and brownfield sites first - before we lose further vast amounts of irreplaceable, immediately productive farmland.