This summer I spent an afternoon, as I do every year, sitting with old friends in their garden a few miles from the Gloucestershire village where we grew up. Their garden adjoins fields, affording a clear view of the Malvern Hills. But this year, the view was different. We watched as trucks crawled across the land three fields ahead, shunting between concrete blocks. Little constructions had appeared between the trees and hedges.
I was witnessing the construction of the UK’s largest solar farm in a rural residential area. Some 26 fields, comprising 271 acres of farmland near the village of Highleadon are being turned into a photovoltaic power station with ground-mounted solar panels and substations for inverters and batteries.
1,300 solar farms already operational, and another 2,783 are planned or under construction
My friends – the apolitical sort who tend to be blissfully unaware of wider issues – were disgruntled. They felt the project had been ‘sneaked through during Covid’ following a consultation during which locals were too frightened to attend the one-to-one meetings held by appointment in a nearby hall. The project was already exceeding its six-month construction period and, to add insult to injury, they saw the farmer who owned the land driving about in a new Land Rover.
My friends hoped that once the solar plant was up and running, they would still be able to enjoy their view of the Malverns by raising their gaze. But they can’t yet know the effects of the glare and glint from the panels which will directly face their home, or the noise from the power station. Although the proposal included promises of ‘biodiversity net gain’, the real effects on wildlife are unknown. Since the project will run for 40 years, locals have plenty of time to find out.
Back in 2023, the proposal for the Highleaden plant was put forward by the development consultancy Pegasus for JBM Solar Projects 21 Ltd, which has been acquired by the profitable German energy company RWE. According to the report submitted to the development management committee of the Forest of Dean Council, 14 objections, including some duplicates, came from residents. The report also revealed, in the form of a strong objection from the parish council, that Pegasus had drummed up positive responses through a social media campaign.
A number of organisations, including the Environment Agency, made objections which were subsequently withdrawn – a sign the applicant was using all its powers of persuasion. The Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), pointing to the impact on footpaths, recommended the proposal be rejected, while Public Rights of Way said the power plant would turn what is currently a country walk into one through ‘a semi-urban/developed landscape’. There was no evidence, added the CPRE, of ‘local community support for the proposed development’.
Nonetheless, in October 2023 the project was given the go-ahead. Seven councillors voted in favour, with one against and one abstaining. They were following the recommendation of the planning officer who concluded that ‘on balance’ the benefits of the development ‘would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the resultant harms’. Their report cited the climate emergency the council had declared, along with the urgent need to help central government switch to renewable energy:
To achieve this ambitious target, considerable growth in large-scale solar farms will be necessary and this cannot be achieved solely by the use of brownfield land or rooftop installation.
The council’s decision failed to take account of the wider issues. The most obvious is taking land out of agricultural production at a time when British agriculture is in decline and there are growing concerns about national food security. The planning officers argued that since there are no government policies or guidance documents relating to food security in place, they could not reasonably be expected to consider the issue. The CPRE, by contrast, can: it estimates that more than half of solar farms are on productive agricultural land, with a third taking up prime farmland.
That number is set to rise. As solar energy company Sunsave cheerfully points out, on top of the 1,300 solar farms already operational, there are another 2,783 planned or under construction, bringing the total to over 4,000.
At a local level, the fundamental question about whether all this sacrifice will achieve its stated purpose is rarely asked. Pegasus estimated that the Highleadon solar plant will provide energy to around 21,700 households – a small proportion of the 279,429 homes in Gloucestershire. Meanwhile, the National Energy System Operator, the body responsible for overseeing the ‘transition to clean energy’, has said that rationing at peak times for households and businesses may be necessary.
A third, less talked about issue renders the national switch to solar power positively surreal. In 2023, the same year the Highleadon plant was approved, the government set up the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), an arms-length, taxpayer-funded body with a brief of conducting cutting-edge science. This year, it emerged that ARIA is to fund projects aimed at dimming the sun, which experts reportedly hope will be ‘scaled up and implemented within ten years’.
So that afternoon, looking out on those familiar fields, I was uncharacteristically quiet. I was pondering a difficult question: has Britain gone mad? But there are signs that the people of Gloucestershire are taking a hard look at the rush to solar power and thinking again.
This summer, Forest of Dean District Council turned down an application by Elgin Energy to install solar panels on 162 acres of land in the same area. With Highleadon and other nearby solar plants, the new development would have created a corridor of a million solar panels. Newent councillor Gill Moseley put the matter succinctly: ‘The cumulative impact of that would almost make us into “Solarshire”, not Gloucestershire.’
Plans for a new solar farm on 117 acres of farmland in the south of the county have also sparked a public outcry. In an area that’s already hosting solar plants, locals, feeling themselves ‘inundated’ with solar plants, are fully alive to the issues, citing the dangers of overdevelopment on farmland and the effects on both humans and wildlife.
While I may no longer be local, I hope for a return to sanity in the green and reasonable land of my youth. Commercial interest, ideologically driven experimentation and panic don’t seem like good enough reasons to industrialise rural Britain.
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