Some will disagree with the direction of travel, but it’s hard to fault the logic. If you’re philosophically committed to ‘securonomics’, recognise the urgent need to turbo-charge growth and find yourself short of cash, your only option is to sweat the assets you have.
For the Labour party, urban by instinct and with the elbow room that comes from a huge majority, these assets most definitely include Britain’s countryside. Where new homes get built is one way this will play out. Another is energy policy.
“Mission #2: Make Britain a clean energy superpower”
It may have had to slash its plan to invest £28 billion a year, but sustainable energy remains an integral part of Labour’s ‘mission to rebuild Britain’.
The Government set out its stall in the King’s Speech. In addition to Great British Energy and the National Wealth Fund (both aimed at boosting the UK’s clean energy sector, but with distinct funding sources and objectives), the de facto ban on onshore wind farms is to be ended. In parallel, the Crown Estate Bill is designed to speed up the development of offshore wind projects. Sitting behind all this is the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Over and above enabling the creation of a wave of new towns, a specific goal of the Bill is to accelerate upgrades to the national grid (including extending the Government’s rights to intervene on planning approvals and reforming the rules on compulsory purchase compensation).
The desk where these matters meet belongs to Ed Milliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. In his first message to staff, he summarised the Department’s mission as “making the UK energy independent, bringing down energy bills for good, creating good jobs and tackling the climate crisis.” Securonomics in a nutshell, if you like.
Driving a solar revolution
Today, sustainable sources represent just over 40% of UK energy production – so if Labour is to meet its target of fully decarbonising the grid by 2030, there’s still a long way to go. Milliband sees solar as playing a pivotal role, not least because it currently contributes less than 5% of total production.
He’s set his sights on tripling this figure…and he’s not hanging about. Within days of coming to power, Milliband waved through three massive solar farms in the east of England that had previously been blocked by Tory ministers: Gate Burton in Lincolnshire, Mallard Pass that spans Lincolnshire and Rutland, and Sunnica’s energy farm on the Suffolk-Cambridgeshire border (just a short gallop from Newmarket).
There are plenty more being planned. Island Green Power alone has at least six projects awaiting approval, covering a total of 7,000 acres and ranging in size from 2,800 acres (Cottam Solar on the Lincs / Notts border) to a more modest 123 acres (Hawkers Farm in Dorset). If these all go ahead, it’s estimated they’ll provide renewable energy to half a million homes.
One of the company’s applications that’s receiving plenty of news coverage is Lime Down Solar Park. Situated near Malmesbury in north Wiltshire, it’s a big project – big enough that Island Green Power has recently agreed to add a buffer zone of 100 acres between the panels and what it describes as ‘sensitive areas’. It remains to be seen whether this will be enough to quell the 8,000 objections received to date. In addition to concerns about taking high-quality farmland out of production, a key grievance is concentration. According to pressure group Stop Lime Down, Wiltshire already has 54 solar farms either in operation or under construction. That’s one of the largest clusters anywhere in the world.
Making hay while the sun shines
If you look at Lime Down Solar Park on a map, you’ll see it’s a very odd shape; in fact, it covers five distinct sites (plus a sixth where the Battery Energy Storage System would be located). This has little to do with the countryside’s natural contours. It reflects what land Island Green Power knows it can lease.
Across the country, farmers say they’re receiving approaches from green energy companies every week. The terms are generous: up to £1,000 per acre per annum, with leases lasting 30 to 40 years. By comparison, an acre of wheat might yield £800 in gross revenue – assuming the weather’s kind and prices are favourable. But with input costs soaring, that probably means a net profit of around £200 per acre.
Many landowners will resist temptation, but others aren’t going to look such a sizeable gift horse in the mouth. In a precarious business, the chance to rent out 10% of a 400-acre farm to solar in return for a guaranteed £40,000 a year may be the difference between solvency and selling up.
Farmers don’t need to rush, however. To meet the Government’s net zero target, the amount of land given over to solar will have to increase six-fold between now and 2050. In other words: demand is going to stay high and lease values may well increase, especially if Labour continues to raise the strike price it guarantees clean energy producers.
Adapting to change
We’re all interested in preserving the beauties of the British countryside, but we also need to keep things in perspective. At the moment, solar farms occupy just 0.1% of UK land. Even if that figure grows to 0.6% over the next few decades, it’ll still be less than is currently given over to golf courses – or indeed airports.
If this is the new reality, the most important question is: what does it mean for our clients?
When it comes to buying land, we’ve always emphasised the importance of scale. The greater the acreage, the greater the opportunity to implement an intelligently diversified ownership strategy. Milliband’s ‘solar revolution’ simply underscores the point. Buyers need to evaluate a property’s economic potential from all angles: the core farming operation, subsidies for nature recovery and biodiversity, plus the recurring revenues that can be secured from energy production.
Of course, our Country practice serves another constituency too: clients looking for a traditional Georgian manor house or something similarly characterful, surrounded by a handful of acres. Such buyers may be worrying whether the growing number of solar farms will eventually encroach on their amenity.
We can offer some words of reassurance: the vast majority of properties will be totally unaffected. That said, it would be unwise to take too relaxed a stance. Solar and the supporting infrastructure are coming – and coming quickly – so it’s more important than ever that buyers conduct exhaustive due diligence on what might be in the planning pipeline.
