Representation by Simon Skelton
- Date submitted
- 4 May 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
West Burton Solar Project (WBSP) is just one of four giant solar proposals in West Lindsey and all within a 6 mile radius. It is therefore quite obvious that this is a 2000MW (peak) solar project "salami sliced" into four. WBSP and Cottam Solar Project are proposed by the same company and even use the same project manager!! All four projects should therefore be examined together. The developers are sharing legal teams and the cable route sharing could be seen as a tool to link all four schemes to get multi DCOs. These proposals would industrialise vast areas of countryside between villages and isolate them from their agricultural heritage. This rural area would be reduced to one of the worlds largest solar farms and battery storage facilities. Solar energy being so intermittant and land hungry should not be the first choice of land based energy generation. Modular nuclear and wind are far more land efficient, low carbon alternatives and would be less intrusive than the current proposals. Solar panels should be roof mounted. WBSP's three separate sites combined with the other three projects means that this agricultural area famed for UK food production would loose 10,000 acres of farmland, and at least 20,000 acres earmarked for solar within the county of Lincolnshire! With not a single brownfield site being seriously considered. Agricultural chain employment will be reduced and our countryside destroyed forever. Permanent Socio-economic ruination for a few hundred transient workers. These are unproportionate and unfair proposals on an already deprived area. This would be anything but levelling up. What gives solar developers the right to demand such huge quantities of land? These 4 proposals are cumulatively an area the size of Lincoln and its boroughs. Solar by its very nature cannot provide energy security and factored at 11%. The 400MW(P) WBSP would really only on average be a 40MW generator. It may be cheap and it may be quick, but it certainly is not for UK farmland. One thing that can be relied on is that solar panels generate exactly NOTHING for half their life time! A sobering thought for a tempory proposal of 40 years. Let us do the right thing, let's not make food production the next big issue for the UK? Solar on roof tops please! Thank you.