Liz Truss and her environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, have achieved the almost unthinkable this week, by reportedly moving to ban solar farms from much of England.
In doing so, they have even managed to unite the free-market, anti-net-zero Institute of Economic Affairs thinktank with green groups, the energy industry and the Labour party in opposing the plans.
Banning solar farms from most of England’s farmland would place Truss squarely in opposition to the policy priorities she set out in her own speech to the Conservative party conference.
Under the banner “get Britain moving”, the prime minister said she wanted faster economic growth, lower energy bills, reinforced energy security, more renewables and action to tackle the climate crisis. Yet the solar ban would hold back investment, lead to higher energy bills, lock in continued gas imports, stop renewable growth and stall efforts to reach net zero emissions.
Truss said her ambition was to unleash “growth, growth and growth”. This will be news to the investors waiting to pour up to £20bn into new UK solar projects, according to the Financial Times.
Her speech decried the “anti-growth coalition” that she said was “always [for] more taxes, more regulation and more meddling”. So farmers looking for more income may balk if Truss bans them from adding to growth by giving their fields over to solar while continuing to graze livestock.
She said growth meant “businesses creating jobs”. But perhaps not the tens of thousands of jobs that industry group Solar Energy UK says its sector could be created by 2030.
Truss touted her government’s efforts to “shield people from astronomically high [energy] bills”. But her ban would block new solar projects, which are quick to build and generates electricity nine times more cheaply than gas.
She talked of “fiscal responsibility” and “bring[ing] down debt” – and yet higher bills will raise the cost of her “energy price guarantee”, which could add as much as £140bn to the national debt.
Warning of dependence on “authoritarian regimes for cheap goods and energy”, Truss said she would take “decisive action to reinforce our energy security”. Yet she is also decisively against new solar, each 5 gigawatts of which would cut UK gas imports by 2%.
Truss said her government was “delivering more renewables” and in an earlier speech had pledged to “speed up our deployment of all clean and renewable technologies, including … solar”. So she must be disappointed to learn that her officials believe an effective ban would slow things down.
Finally, the Conservative leader told the party faithful that she would “deliver on our commitment to net zero [emissions by 2050]” and “tackle climate change”. Her government remains committed – at least as of early September – to a fully decarbonised power sector by 2035.
Is this why Truss wants to block new solar? The technology, after all, plays a major role in the net zero pathways published by her climate advisers the Climate Change Committee – and I estimate that each 5GW of new solar would cut UK emissions by 2m tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The real reasons for Truss and Jayawardena’s antipathy are unclear. Since they cannot oppose solar on grounds of cost, growth, energy security or climate, they are now citing food security. Yet solar occupies a tiny fraction of the UK, is usually on less productive agricultural land and is frequently co-located with grazing. At less than 0.1% of the country, solar covers a smaller land area than airports, golf courses or Christmas trees.
Solar also covers a significantly smaller UK land area than biofuel crops, even though Carbon Brief analysis shows solar delivers 50-100 times more driving distance per hectare.
Moreover, the farmland supposedly under threat from solar is facing more serious pressures from elsewhere. “The biggest threat to prime farmland in the UK is not solar farms,” says Prof Richard Betts, technical lead of the third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment report. “It’s climate change.”
One of the only remaining possibilities is that the prime minister simply dislikes the way solar farms look.
If so, the Liz Truss who says she wants less regulation, more growth, cheaper bills, more renewables, greater energy security and lower emissions may need to have words. With herself.
