Representation by Mrs Jeanette Borderick
- Date submitted
- 13 March 2022
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Sunnica Energy Farm will take 600 times more land to deliver the same power as a traditional power station, so the land use is not good value for money. Sunnica claims that it will be a 500 MW solar power station, delivering 23.5 million MWh over 40 years and it will occupy 11 sq km of arable land. That sounds impressive. However, when you break down the numbers, per year that is 587,500 MWh, which, when divided by 8,760 hours per year, is only 67.07 MW, not 500 MW. Large-scale solar developments are generally a poor use of valuable land. Giving a currently relevant example: Russia and Ukraine. Vast harvests of grain have been habitually gathered there each year, but it is extremely unlikely there will be a planting season in Ukraine this year. Grain from Russia will, most likely, be subjected to an embargo which will last for many years. Worldwide prices will soar. Since we get some of our grain from those regions, now more than ever, we need to protect our arable countryside and insist that we become food secure and grow our own food. By growing more of our own food locally, we also cut carbon emissions in transportation. It is essential that we address the key issue of allowing developers to get away with putting vast industrial plants on good arable land that we could grow grain and/or other crops on (or have cattle, sheep & pigs graze on) to develop our food security. For me, that is an essential point. The war that Russia is conducting should be a warning signal to us all. We should get ahead now by ensuring we have our own land available to plant for future years. As well as food security, I fully appreciate that we need to secure our economy against external oil and gas influences. Until we have solar on every large building, there should be none in fields at all. Development of this nature should be guided away from the “best and most fertile” agricultural land and, where possible, utilise developed brownfield sites, contaminated land, industrial land or agricultural land that is classified 3b, 4 or 5, certainly not 1 or 2. With solar we have a choice: brownfield sites, industrial sites, rooftops or good agricultural land. For our food security, we have no choice. It is only available through good agricultural land. Finally, I want to highlight human rights abuses. A 2021 report by the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, entitled “In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced Labour and Global Solar Supply Chains”, concluded that the solar panel industry in China has high exposure to supply chain compromise by human rights abuses—in other words, child labour and the institutional abuse of workers. We are buying equipment to put in England, but allowing the abuse of people’s rights in China to do it. Should we allow this to proceed, this government will, quite rightly, be called out on this issue.