Charging towards a fossil-fuel-free future

One instance is the strategy on advancing renewable-energy production on land and sea. The amount of activity on the ground is quite astounding. Comparing it to a gold rush is not an exaggeration. Nearly every landowner in the country has been approached with a view to siting wind turbines, or installing land or roof-based solar panels. And we haven’t seen the half of it yet, as the biodigester industry begins to crank up where farmers will be inundated with offers to supply grass, silage, beet, slurry and other feed sources for the production of biomethane. Hardly a day passes without some reference in the media, online and elsewhere, to another renewable project in planning, passed for development, objected to, appealed, being constructed or up and running. The courts have become involved, adjudicating on whether environmental and renewable energy dictates take priority over planning decisions and county development plans. 

Long-term impact? 

The game is on, and little or no analysis or impact assessment has gone into the long-term implications of many of these developments, over and above the seemingly absolute necessity to change the country from being fossil fuel-dependent to renewable energy dependent. The recent storm and snow-induced electricity outages have not created a discussion on whether we should even be entirely rocking to the AC/DC tune that seems to be the only path ahead. 

At the risk of suggesting that the absolute sanctity of landownership rights should not be entirely sacrosanct, there is merit in at least discussing and developing some broad guidelines around land use for solar and other energy-production uses. If farmers can make more return from developing solar units on their farms, they should be perfectly entitled to do so, up to a point. Is it the best use of fertile land in a world where food-productive land is becoming increasingly scarce? At a micro individual farm level, it is for landowners to make up their own minds. At a macro national land use level, there should be at least room for discussion and prioritisation. Where there are alternative means of achieving solar renewable goals from a national perspective, they should be prioritised and incentivised to the extent that they at least compete, from a financial return perspective, with turning thousands of acres of fertile land into solar complexes. 

Practical proposition

Imagination is required. Solar panel installation on farm buildings is going ahead at speed. That’s a positive development. Take the scenario one step further, if only for the sake of debate. Is the cost for developers of covering entire farmyards with roofing to facilitate solar panel installation greater than the cost of submerging solar panel-bearing buttresses into thousands of acres of cropland? A secondary benefit from this strategy would be the further mitigation of run-off from farmyards entering our streams and rivers. The construction of solar panelled roofs over every uncovered slurry tank on every farm in the country, co-financed by solar developers and carbon taxes is a practical proposition. Of course, developers prefer economies of scale. That imprimatur should be at least diluted by the need to ensure that we do not look back in 20 years’ time and wonder why we let it happen. There is a seemingly endless flood of investment available to develop renewable energy projects. That is not a good enough reason to let the sector develop without the thought, at least, that there may be better ways of progressing towards a fossil fuel-free future.