Are big solar farms a real eco-disaster?
FARMER Jamie Blackett’s recent article about the proposed Lime Down solar farm in Wiltshire (Mail) portrays it as a countryside disaster. A 2,000-acre solar farm is certainly larger than most of those we see popping up on farmland. But sadly, if we all drive electric vehicles and rely on ground or air source heating, where will we get all the electricity from? I don’t believe there are too many Hinkley Point Cs in the offing. Mr Blackett points to the effect of the panels on wildlife: ‘Fields that are haunted by kestrels by day and barn owls by night’; and ‘deep ditches and ponds where ducks nest every spring and cuckoos can still be heard calling in the willows’.
He suggests that hares and skylarks will also vanish in the solar minefield. Well, Mr Blackett, I live by a solar farm and the wildlife has certainly not disappeared. In fact, quite the contrary. Wild creatures adapt just as we humans have to, and hares actually like cover.
Mr Blackett further suggests that after Lime Down’s predicted 40-year lifespan, the whole site will become brownfield housing. Well, none of us can predict the future. But it is highly likely that, given the cost of the infrastructure (the galvanized steel frame the panels sit on and the massive cable taking power to the Grid, etc), the out-of-date inefficient panels will simply be replaced, continuing to produce green energy for those 40 million electric cars. Also, landowners and farmers earn a decent living from renting their land for solar, rather than the pittance they receive for their produce from greedy supermarkets. At the moment, dairy farmers get an average 38p per litre for their milk, which costs 34p per litre to produce. Yet somehow they must reinvest in their business from that 4p per litre.
DENNIS JONES, Wadebridge, Cornwall.
AS WE already import nearly half our food, loss of farmland to solar farms will only increase that dependence. What is more, there is absolutely no need for solar farms to be built on productive agricultural land. They could be combined with wind farms on more remote open areas of the Pennines, Dartmoor, the Scottish Highlands and the Scottish Borders, using common distribution cables. On a smaller but still useful scale, many existing buildings such as warehouses and all new-builds could be fitted with solar panels.
C. M. HUMPHRIS, stockport, Cheshire.