'Planning and Solar Farms: A Front Line in Net Zero Disputes'?
Authors: David Toke, Costanza Concetti, Muhammad Mohsin Hussan, Paula Duffy, Jo Vergunst
weblink: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-923x.70031
Abstract:
Solar power is rapidly increasing in importance as a source of UK renewable energy. However, planning applications for solar farms have emerged as a new cleavage in what was previously a consensus policy area of acting to counter climate change. To understand this controversy, we need to understand factors that influence outcomes of planning decisions at the local authority level. According to our research local government processes solar farm planning applications in a non-partisan fashion with respect to Councillor’s party membership. Notwithstanding some intense controversies, Councillors work harmoniously, generally, with Planning Officers and local Parish/ Community Councils to balance national planning policy guidelines and the views of local inhabitants. The provision of local community benefits might increase the public’s acceptance of solar farms. However, without political cover at the national scale provided by policies favouring radical reduction of carbon emissions it seems likely that solar farms in the countryside will face strong restrictions imposed through revised national planning policy.
