Il solare occuperà non più dello 0,6% dei terreni agricoli del Regno Unito entro il 2030

Solar installations will occupy no more than 0.6% of the United Kingdom’s utilized agricultural land by 2030, according to DESNZ.

The UK ministerial department shared the figure in response to a recent FoI request that asked how much agricultural land will be used for ground-mounted solar projects.

Its response points to the UK government’s solar roadmap, published in June, which set out plans to achieve up to 47 GW of solar by the end of the decade.

DESNZ said the 0.6% figure would only be reached if all new capacity modeled under the roadmap’s high-end policy scenario were to be ground-mounted. It added that the calculation was based on the United Kingdom’s total utilized agricultural land area of 16.8 million hectares.

The FoI request also asked the department to explain its claim that ground-mounted solar would occupy 0.4% of UK land under its high-end policy scenario, up from about 0.1% today.

In response, DESNZ pointed to Annex 1 of the solar roadmap, which says the 0.4% figure would be reached in the “very unlikely scenario” where no progress on rooftop solar is made and all new solar capacity is ground-mounted projects.

Waiting for the hysterical Daily Mail article claiming that “solar may take up 50% more farmland by 2030 than DESNZ initially forecast”. Using the FOI source like it’s a smoking gun and completely burying the 0.6% figure.