Near me in nottighamshire farmers are now installing solar farms and is that good for the enviroment, soon enough more and more will pop up as demand for elec increases.
Actually, they are not that good for the environment.
A lot of prime arable land is getting swallowed up by these ‘panel farms’. The loss of crop acreage and thus yield means more reliance on imported crops such as wheat, barley, rape, potatoes, beans etc etc, which have to be imported on ships burning low grade oil and creating more pollution.
Also, it is not just trees that absorb atmospheric CO2, crops do as well, in fact more so because of the acreage involved. With panels replacing crops there is a huge net loss of natural CO2 receptors.
Then there are the questions of both bio security of the imported crops and also guarantee of supply.
So overall, where farmers are taking the ‘panel shilling (and we were offered it but declined), they are rather doing a dis-service to the environment.
As most generated electricity is getting ‘greener’ by using biomass, wind, nuclear etc instead of coal, there really does need to be a debate on whether it is good use of fine arable land to cover it with panel arrays.