Staffordshire countryside charity raises concern over scale of solar farms and battery storage facilities
The increasing number of solar farms and battery storage facilities being proposed in rural areas is threatening the countryside and food production, a countryside charity has warned. CPRE Staffordshire is concerned about the cumulative impact of such applications, the impact on the Green Belt, and the industrialisation of the countryside.
To show the scale of the issue, CPRE has produced an interactive map of all the proposed and approved solar energy and battery storage facilities in the county. The map can be viewed on CPRE’s website.
CPRE has recently opposed an application by Chiltern Green Energy for a battery energy storage system in the Green Belt in Featherstone, where the batteries will be sited in 80 storage containers measuring 6m x 2.5m.
CPRE has also objected to a proposed solar farm at Rownall in the Staffordshire Moorlands, located in the Green Belt, as well as plans for two adjacent solar farms at Drointon in mid-Staffordshire. Residents of Rownall and Bagnall in the Moorlands have had to contend with six recent applications for solar farms - two approved and three pending – affecting 250 acres of Green Belt.
The South Staffordshire village of Shareshill has seen five planning applications for battery storage facilities and solar farms within a 2-3km radius of each other and on Best and Most Versatile (BMV) agricultural land.
Cllr Bob Cope, Chairman of Shareshill Parish Council, said: “Developers are not considering poorer quality land, which is against policy advice in the National Planning Policy Framework. They are are only seeking a connection to the grid substation and a willing landowner, with many having to wait several years for a connection, but all of them are applying for planning permission now thus creating a queuing system and land banking. This will lead to the rural landscape being industrialised, resulting in cumulative effects locally, overdevelopment in a small area and the loss of valuable best quality food growing land.”
Rather than locating solar farms and battery storage facilities in the countryside, CPRE wants to see more investment in rooftop renewables, and is calling on the government to set a national rooftop solar target of at least 40GW by 2035.
A major new CPRE report has found that over half the solar panels needed to hit national net zero targets could be fitted on rooftops and in car parks. This offers hope for protecting valuable landscapes.
Recently published research by the UCL Energy Institute for CPRE found that installing solar panels on existing rooftops and other land such as car parks could provide at least 40-50GW of low carbon electricity in England by 2035, contributing more than half of the total national target of 70GW of solar energy by 2035.
By Sarah Burgess - Contributor
