How Labour red tape is holding back a new much-needed solar revolution

More energy is essential to keeping our lights on and getting our economy growing again. But with electricity demand set to increase 200 per cent by 2050 as homes use more and transport, heating, and industry electrify, our domestic production levels need to keep up. We can’t keep relying on imports.

CEN MP John Cooper

Without enough domestic energy production, our energy security is exposed. Current events in the Middle East and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine have laid bare how susceptible we are to spikes in energy prices, which cause suffering to households and businesses across the country. We need to unlock more homegrown energy – including nuclear, renewables, and North Sea oil and gas – to stop hostile petrostates from holding Britain to ransom.

That means unlocking new clean energy technologies such as floating solar to help power our nation, but the Labour government is overlooking its potential and relying too much on solar farms that compete for land needed for food production.

Ground-mounted solar has its place, but we need to protect prime agricultural land to underpin our domestic food security and protect our rural way of life. To respond to increasing demand and bolster energy security, while protecting food security, we need a more balanced approach that embraces new technologies and doesn’t put too much pressure on agricultural land.

That’s where floating solar can help. This innovative technology can be placed on bodies of water, such as reservoirs, docks, and quarries, to generate electricity without relying on agricultural land.

With summers becoming hotter and drier, and water demand growing, floating solar can also help prevent water shortages and hosepipe bans by creating a physical barrier to the sun and reducing evaporation.

Floating solar can also help protect our native wildlife, as it reduces algal blooms, which are becoming increasingly damaging to wildlife as our summers become warmer.

However, Labour’s myopic focus on land-based solar has led them to miss the potential benefits and they have not cut the red-tape holding back this new technology, dismissing it as nascent. This inaction is preventing us from boosting our energy, food and water security.

That is why I am calling on the government to unlock the UK’s floating solar potential and make much more use of this technology. It is ridiculous that floating solar projects on reservoirs can be built without planning permission – but only if the water companies building them use the electricity generated themselves.

Why should these developments be stopped from providing power to others who need it? This needs to change. It should be possible to build projects on reservoirs without planning permission by using permitted development rights, and to sell off the electricity, for example, to the grid or to a nearby business.

This same freedom should also be given to projects on disused docks, small on-farm reservoirs, and disused quarries. Floating solar can help farmers struggling with rising operating costs like electricity and also diversify their income streams.

The natural landscape of our rural communities and farmland needs to be protected, as we rightly build more clean energy to meet growing demand. Unleashing floating solar could be an important part of delivering this, but only if the government cuts the red tape holding it back.

First published by The Scotsman. John Cooper is Member of Parliament for Dumfries & Galloway.