Former Prime Minister Liz Truss called them a “blight on the landscape”. Another former PM Rishi Sunak vowed to stop “our best farmland” being lost to their march across the countryside.
But the fact is that solar farms not only cover a tiny proportion of rural Britain, but according to new research, they benefit wildlife.
A study by scientists from the RSPB and the University of Cambridge found that bird abundance and diversity was higher in areas of farmland given over to solar power than in adjacent areas that are traditional arable farmland.
The research found that this was particularly true for solar farms that were also managed with wildlife in mind – where, for example, there was a mixed habitat that included hedges and grassland areas that are not grazed or cut. In these areas, there were nearly three times as many birds as on adjacent arable land.
Should we be prioritising energy generation over food production, however? Many people have previously said this is wrong, but Isobel Morris, a senior policy officer with the RSPB, says there isn’t really a conflict between the two.
“We know solar farms only take up a tiny proportion of agricultural land,” she says. “They take up about 0.1 per cent of land at present, and even if we triple our current capacity, solar farms would still cover less land that is used for golf courses.”
Analysis by the Carbon Brief website found that the Government’s ambitions to achieve net zero carbon emissions necessitated increasing the amount of farmland devoted to solar power from 230km2 to about 700km2 by 2035.
Assuming all this land was used to grow wheat, it would amount to 560,000 tonnes a year, equivalent to 4 per cent of the UK’s annual wheat harvest. And that’s an extreme example – in reality, not all solar farms will be put on arable land, and – in many cases – crops can be grown alongside them.
Main image: UK solar farm/Getty
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