WeSET has produced a short 8-minute film on ‘Solar power, farming and nature: towards a safe future’.
Solar power is a land-based energy system. It will need to use land to generate power cleanly and cheaply. Concerns have been raised about how much land in Britain would be needed for solar, along with linked issues about impacts on biodiversity and food security.
Our short video summarises the key points. The bottom line is pretty straightforward. About 18 million hectares of land in the UK are used for agriculture. 18,000 hectares are currently used for solar. That’s 0.1%. A fourfold increase in solar would still mean but we are using just 0.4% of UK agricultural land.
It includes speakers from two universities, the National Farmers Union, the RSPB, Solar Energy UK and Community Energy England as well as Adam Twine, the farmer at Westmill.
There is more information on these issues on our solar power, farming and biodiversity page.