Ed Miliband has pushed through Britain’s biggest solar farm on green land despite the objections of officials, prompting fears he is endangering the nation’s food security. The Telegraph has more.
The Energy Secretary’s decision to overturn the planning inspectorate and give the green light to the controversial project in rural eastern England has sparked fury from MPs and campaigners.
The scheme will see Sunnica, an energy firm, building a 2,792-acre solar farm and energy storage infrastructure around several villages in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, providing power for 100,000 homes. Mr. Miliband has also given the go-ahead along to two solar farms in Lincolnshire.
It is feared this will be the first of many further decisions that will sacrifice vast amounts of farmland to Net Zero energy projects.
The danger is that the fall in domestic agricultural production will compromise the nation’s food security, meaning it will face the prospect of greater dependence on food imports and increasing vulnerability to price rises on international markets.
The decision suggests it is likely that Mr. Miliband will make meeting Net Zero targets a priority over preserving agricultural land in the dozens of other solar farm decisions making their way through the planning system.
On Saturday night, he defended the move, saying: “Some of these cases had been held up for months before I arrived in the department. They were put on my desk on Monday, and I’ve made a decision in three days.
“This is the speed we’re working at to achieve energy independence, cut bills for families and kick-start green economic growth. We will make tough decisions with ambition and urgency – all part of our plan to make the U.K. a clean energy superpower.”
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
He is endangering the nation’s food security
He’s clearly committed to the depopulation agenda.
A very big danger for the UK
Obnoxious little man.
Great idea (in California). Don’t forget to build the extra power station to take up the slack when the sun’s not shining. Ideological idiot
Did you not read in today’s Daily Sceptic that it has been one of best Junes since records began? This is the future! We really must abandon all our silly common sense and follow The Science!
Similar issue with biofuels, if the crops is specifically grown for biofuels, you use up a food supply. Of course if it is a biproduct from crops, then that is different. I wonder how much of our food supply is going to biofuel, or is it all imported?
It might depend on the actual weather. One of the sources in this country is animal grade wheat (not suitable for making flour). If it was good enough for flour, the price would be higher than animal grade. https://vivergofuels.com/ Elsewhere, other crops are more likely, such as maize (corn in American).
Interesting stuff, and nothing against some of this stuff as long as it is effective.
If animal grade products are used for other purposes presumaly we either import alternatives or we don’t have the animals (meat, milk, leather etc).
Perfectly good food used to make fuel like corn etc forces up world food prices and adversely affects the poorest.
Move with the times people. Who needs farming when there’s Cricket One in Asia?
https://www.cricketone.asia/
If anyone is interested in the process, here is the bumf from the planning department: https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/wp-content/ipc/uploads/projects/EN010106/EN010106-006023-Sunnica%20SoS%20Decision%20Letter%20signed%2012%20July%202024.pdf
To save time, you might delve into page 49 starting with “4.223. The Secretary of State disagrees with the ExA and agrees with the view of the Applicant that
any agricultural land resource lost to the Proposed Development “could return to supporting
agricultural production, grazing sheep and so would not be lost or degraded” [ER 4.12.105].
The Secretary of State considers that a solar farm is a temporary and reversible development
and considers that there is no evidence to suggest that agriculture cannot be reestablished on the land temporarily lost….”
The Conclusions and Decision are shown on page 70.
“The Secretary of State considers that a solar farm is a temporary and reversible development.”
Perhaps the commie pranny can enlighten us as to what form of electricity generation will be replacing this “temporary” development”? Peat burning? Dung? If the answer is nuclear – then why don’t we fastrack sufficient nuclear capacity and continue fossil fuel usage until it comes on board?
I appreciate that this would need the government to overide the planning process – but isn’t this what he has effectively done in this case?
So how much will be set aside by the owners for repoval, recycling and restoration of the land. I suggest nothing until the panels are nearer the end of their lives than the beginning.
Grass cannot grow in abundance under solar panels. The only grass is incidental between rows of panels and even that does not get the full amount of sunlight (obvs).
Sheep production is insignificant in the arc around Newmarket where Suyunnica will build their installation. It is mostly cereals. That cannot be attempted on land where solar panes have been installed.
What numpty DEFRA officials thought you could grow anything much under or around them.
Absolutely.
Once land is Rewilded, on the other hand, it is overgrown and uninhabitable.
Agricultural land that is left to run wild becomes useless to man and beast.
Red Ed Miliband giving the go ahead to a solar farm that uses .01% of the UK’s 23 million acres of farmland is not in itself threatening food security.
Any idea where this will stop?
When the Legacy Parties are removed from Parliament.
Starvation.
Quite.
It is prime farmland idiot boy. Solar energy is not clean, not green and is 5x more expensive than the alternative. Where will your food come from and how will it be delivered? Magic fairies and unicorns?
“not in itself threatening food security.”
Oh yes it damn well is.
We currently produce around 58% of our food needs. We cannot afford to lose any land that produces food.
The fact that no UK government has implemented a food security plan for this country since WWII is nothing short of criminal.
If food shortages occur outside the UK for whatever reason then the supplies we need will not be available. Furthermore, as a result of the
hottest summer evahwashout summer crop yields are likely to fall by about 6 – 8 %. What does that mean? Significantly higher prices.The harsh reality is that we desperately need to bring more land into use in order to build up national resilience – as a politician might put it.
Wind and solar cannot power industrial society though. They are niche part time technologies, and only actually exist because of massive government subsidy. Because no one would build these unless they are guaranteed return on their investment which is often above the market price. This is the technologies favoured by western governments based on the idea that wealthy countries should stop using fossil fuels because over the last few hundred years we have used up more than our fair share of this finite resource in the ground and must STOP. The plausible excuse for this eco socialism is saving the planet from warming and from climate change, which upon any serious scrutiny of the so called science,collapses and is shown to be “official science” rather than “science”, all based on speculative modelling which do not match what is happening in the real world.
He’s proving to be a complete loon!
Nearly right.
A complete BOON is what he is.
A boon for our side of the argument. The faster he does this cr*p the faster people will start to question the Project Stone Age programme.
Some one commented on DS recently that the first time the power cuts take out a nursing home, the sh*t will really hit the fan …. But the fan won’t be turning, because power cuts.
The problem is that the MSM won’t report any negatives such as the inevitable power cuts to Care Homes and hospitals. As we see with excess deaths and jabination injuries…. They ain’t reported…so they ain’t happened…..
Are these homes mentioned expecting sufficient electricity to power their heat pumps and recharge their two EVs over the Winter?
They ARE expecting it but will be very disappointed!
Not against solar per se, but there’s no good reason why they couldn’t be placed on top of, for example, car parks and other similar tarmacked/concreted areas in cities.
Might not fit the agenda though…
Or on roof tops
How well has solar done in the last 6-8 months of constant grey skies and rain? For that matter, how much wind has there been in the same timeframe? Millibacon has always been well short of rashers.
This solar farm will take up about 0.007% of the UK’s agricultural land, albeit some of the most productive. Therefore I’m not convinced that solar farms present a serious threat to our food security. IMO we should be far more worried about about the amount of subsidies solar farms receive and the fact they obviously need gas generated back up for night time and especially during the winter when our current installed solar panels struggle to produce 1GW of energy at midday.
It depends a lot on the nature of the agricultural land, and what it is used for. E.g. in that area, the horse industry is big business. Some surface mounted solar panels actually have some sheep grazing the grass around them as well.
Trying to raise sheep on a solar farm would be extremely difficult. How are they going to be rounded up?
Unless you have experience working with farmers it might be best to say nowt.
See my earlier comment on food security.
… providing power for 100,000 homes.
A nice round number. It sounds quite exciting to know that those homes can now be ticked off as being sufficiently powered using ‘clean’ energy.
When there is a cloudy sky? When it is pouring with rain? When it is cold and everyone has their heating turned on and their ovens baking bread? When those model citizens are all charging their EVs? Is the power produced sufficient for one home under those circumstances – or zero homes?
What is the point of cutting utility bills,if there is no food, needed for survival?, prices already extortinate, obviously planning on starving people to death.
Spot on.
Miliband and these eco socialist policies will NOT cut energy bills. The countries with the highest electricity prices are the ones with the most wind and sun. Germany, Denmark and the UK eg have the most wind turbines and the highest prices. Oh and have you ever seen a lithium mine?———The whole idea of green politics is to remove reliable affordable energy and give you unreliable unaffordable energy. People like Miliband talking about cheaper electricity from wind and sun are bare faced liars.
“They were put on my desk on Monday, and I’ve made a decision in three days.”
This old adage springs to mind “Act in haste – repent at leisure”. Except of course both the new and the old Governments are incapable of repentance as we saw and continue to see clearly following the warp-speed mismanagement of the pandemic.
Absolutely I doubt “repent” is in their vocabulary.
There was no ‘pandemic.’
Now this is the guy, and his party, that is the REAL threat to democracy!
I had domestic PV Panels 14 years ago, well placed and orientated. They took 10 years to “break even”.
In a winter quarter I was paid about £60 while a summer quarter earned £1200. A massive difference. So Milliband what are you going to use on cloudy days (or even bright days) in winter? Perhaps magic storage that can give output for months? Idiot!
Now you are applying actual ‘logic’ there, not ‘politician logic’… or ‘The Science’. It’s all BS, the only saving grace is physical actual science will prevail, and lights will go out, so people have to then see…
Commercial solar is sometimes producing respectable power but rather poor at night and in the winter!
Checkout GridWatch.co.uk , its really interesting and proves the stupidity of a “carbon free” grid.
“Rather poor at night” ??/ Are you kidding? ——You mean ZERO AT NIGHT.
Of course I meant that! ….satire.
“We are going to have to get used to using electricity as and when it is available”———————The Head of the National Grid Steve Holiday. —He said this quite a few year ago, and that is what the Green Agenda is all about and with a huge majority that Labour now have and with the eco imbecile Miliband now in charge of Energy that is where we are headed. —“Electricity as and when it is available”…In other words if the sun is shining or the wind blows. The eco socialists are coming for your standard of living and it is only heading in one direction —DOWN
The UK has been bought and paid for by the WEF. Sunak, Rishi, paid up members? Who else? The WEF is a sick organisation that has clearly stated “you will own nothing and be happy” and “ you will eat bugs”. Looks like they are half way there. Did the taxpayers of this country agree to this? No. I did not think so
Ed, who is paying for your spending spree on solar farms. Have you even asked those who must pay for your spending spree? No, I did not think so. Where in the hell are the other politicians in parliament? You have over 600? Do they have anything to say about this.by the way Ed, what is your plan for preventing food shortages in the UK. We are ll interested in hearing about that.
Hm, sometimes worth doing some sums – which climate change fanatics seem incapable of. Looking at the figures quoted, assuming that by providing ‘power’ they mean providing enough electrical energy, not the same thing, I’ve done a rough back of the envelope calculation.To provide power for all England’s 25 million households would require at least 700,000 acres or approx 2% of England’s land. That would be a disaster for wildlife as green areas would be covered and vital habitats destroyed. As pointed out, food production would be harmed and let’s not ask about the minerals required for that number of solar panels and battery back up. What a disaster. Why do Net Zero advocates never scale up their figures. It’s rubbish – and dangerous rubbish at that.
I wonder what would be the impact on CO2 of importing more food compared to the amount of CO2 saved by the solar farms. I suspect all the environmental damage caused by the solar farms is for nothing, even if you think that higher levels of CO2 are a problem in the first place.
For comparison, one of the larger existing solar farms in the UK is Wroughton – part of an old airfield visible from the Ridgeway: https://www.gem.wiki/Wroughton_Airfield_Solar_Park Lots more related records available via: https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-solar-power-tracker/