Readers’ Letters: Clean energy should not be at cost to land

Rachel Armitage’s piece last week (Agricultural Land Is Being Cast Aside) on the Statutory Public Consultation underway on the Great North Solar Farm showed the uphill struggle that local planning authorities are having to undergo to protect our local assets of national importance

Andy Freeman’s comment that “we are going to be a host for an energy supply that will benefit the whole country and I’m not sure what benefit there will be for us” is only partly right.

There’s a growing amount of evidence that solar actually won’t be of benefit for the whole country.

Advocates will talk of its capacity but the reality is solar in the UK is only likely to achieve approximately 10% of that capacity and mostly during summer lunchtimes.

The quote that planning authorities feel like they are “shouting into the void” says it all.

Given the Secretary of State’s use of special powers on projects deemed of strategic importance and his ideological preference for solar arrays the application will likely be approved.

Newark will therefore end up losing a large amount of food producing land for little return to the area, the country or its economy.

I’m sure there will be a counter argument in which someone will suggest we need to show leadership on the road to Net Zero, but the reality is we aren’t.

In 1969 both the UK and China each produced approximately 600m tonnes of CO2. Whilst the UK has halved its production, China has surged on to produce approximately 20 times its 1969 level.

We aren’t leading anything except the race to have some of the most expensive energy on the planet for consumers and businesses.

Numerous political parties are scrambling around for responses to issues like this.

There’s a lack of coherent thought about the appropriate energy mix and where it should be placed.

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) have a clearly published policy on this in that they would deny permission on applications to change agricultural land into solar farms.

It’s vital we have both food security and energy security. We certainly won’t get those by giving up food producing land for something that won't solve the energy security issue. — ANDREW LEATHERLAND, East Midlands Social Democratic Party, Newark.