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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Jillian Ambrose

‘An enormous scar’: the battle over solar farms and pylons as Reform UK takes aim at net zero

A composite of photos including a solar farm
From left: Ed Miliband, Nigel Farage, Margaret Thatcher and Andrea Jenkyns. Composite: Alamy/Fabio De Paola/Christopher Thomond/Shutterstock/Getty/Guardian design

In early summer the wide open fields of Lincolnshire seem to expand beneath even larger clear blue skies. Travel north through the breadbasket of Britain towards the North Sea, from Grantham to Grimsby, and farming gives way to factories, refineries and the Humber docks. Each sector tells a story of Britain’s industrial decline: the demise of heavy industry on the banks of the Humber, the closure of coal power plants, fishing fleets decimated by the cod wars of the 1970s and 80s.

Lincolnshire is at the heart of the government’s plan for the greatest economic step-change since the Industrial Revolution: a green re-industrialisation to help galvanise the country’s net zero agenda, create jobs and revitalise deprived areas.

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