Green Nimbys are right: even solar energy enthusiasts should be against covering the countryside with panels
Ross on Why
ROSS JONATHAN CLARK
It is an uphill struggle stopping one of Ed Miliband’s solar farms, but at least Reform UK councillors in Kent have found an ally to share their cause: their Green colleagues on Folkestone and Hythe District Council. Yes, you did read that right. The Green party, the very same Green party which is telling us that we will burn in hell unless we slash our carbon emissions (or at least used to, before its bandwagon moved on to an even more fashionable cause, Palestine), has come down against solar farms on Romney Marsh, 5000 acres of which have been earmarked for the purpose. Nor is it the first time that the Greens have tried to stop green infrastructure. Last year the then co-leader of the Greens, Adrian Ramsay, campaigned against a 114 mile pylon line between Norwich and Tilbury, designed to beef up the grid in order to carry more wind and solar-generated electricity around the country.
Green nimbyism seems to be one of the country’s fastest-growing political movements. It is certainly flourishing around my way, in Cambridgeshire. I can’t say I am too happy about the planned solar farms, and a battery installation, which have been projected for the surrounding countryside, but then again I don’t seem to be quite as upset as some of my neighbours, not least our local LibDem MP – yes, the very same party which says not only does it it support Labour’s plan to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 but adds “we would accelerate investment in the transition to a zero-carbon and climate-resilient Britain”.
But hang on a minute. Could the Green Nimbys actually have a point? The Folkestone and Hythe Greens are not against solar panels: they say they favour them on buildings but not in fields. It is extraordinary how many warehouse buildings, retail parks and open air car parks could have solar panels but do not, while good quality, productive agricultural land is disappearing beneath solar arrays. The green energy lobby often claims that there is not enough space on the rooftops of UK buildings to carry the solar panels demanded by Ed Miliband’s target for decarbonising for electricity grid by 2030, and that therefore agricultural land needed. But is that true?
At this point I am going to sidestep the issue of whether it is really sensible to try to build an electricity grid which is heavy on intermittent renewables. I would say not. As I have argued many times before, renewables might seem to be cheap if you look at generation costs in isolation. But when you take into account the system costs of trying to absorb the intermittent energy – storage and back-up facilities – the picture changes completely. Renewables then become extremely expensive, as well as threatening to destabilise the grid. The Spanish blackout of April 2025 demonstrated the perils of heavy reliance on solar power: in contrast to the spinning turbines of coal, gas and nuclear power stations, solar power lacks inertia, making the grid more prone to power surges.
But let’s leave that aside and look at it from the point of view of someone who believes that we really can construct a grid which is about 80 percent wind and solar (the sort of proportion which Miliband’s energy transition envisages). In that case would we need to cover fields with solar panels? Miliband’s plan envisages between 45 and 47 gigawatts of installed solar capacity by 2030. How much land would that occupy? In September 2024, according to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Britain had 7.7 gigawatts of installed capacity, occupying 0.1 percent of the surface area of Britain. If the extra installed solar power were to be installed at the same density, therefore, it would require 5.8 times are much area as it does now: a total of 0.58 percent of the surface area of Britain. Could that all be put on roof tops? According to the Ordnance Survey, around 1.4 percent of the surface area of Britain is currently occupied by buildings. Not all this roof space would be suitable for solar panels: some of it will be north-facing and some will be in the shade of larger buildings. But still there seems to be ample space to accommodate the panels which Miliband believes to be necessary – and the 1.4 percent of land covered by buildings doesn’t even include brownfield spaces like open air car parks which could easily be covered with panels.
I stress again: I really don’t think it is sensible trying to build an electricity grid where the majority of power is provided by renewables. But even if you are a solar energy enthusiast you shouldn’t be advocating plastering the countryside with solar panels. The solar energy lobby might want you to believe in the need for vast solar farms, because it is more convenient for them to build in vast blocks, and of course landowners love giant solar farms. But there is more than enough room on our rooftops, without sacrificing the countryside.
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(UKR)