LAND equivalent to the acreage of some 1,000 UK farms will be needed to accommodate the Labour Government’s Net Zero energy plans.
Solar power, for example, requires 34 times more land per unit of energy than nuclear power.
However, as the price of UK farmland has trebled over the last 20 years this is causing a major headache for Energy secretary Ed Miliband and his fatuous promise to slash energy bills.
Forcing farmers to sell up to avoid Inheritance Tax is seen by Labour as a mechanism to bring more land on to the market and drive down prices.
It is in this context that the inheritance tax raid on British farms can be viewed - as a further front in its Net Zero ambition.
Farm Land Trebles In Price
UK farmland prices have risen from £3,500 per acre to around £10,000 and in 2023 over half of UK farm land was bought by non-farmers - wealthy individuals and institutions - looking to avoid inheritance tax.
As the price of land has risen the rental for solar farms has nudged up to over £1,000 per acre with this reflected in a rise in the latest price-setting round.
The guaranteed price paid for solar energy has risen by over 25% in the last few years as a result of increased supply chain costs such as land, a lack of grid capacity and stretched supply chains (1).
The gaming of the UK energy system to support renewables began in 2014 under the Conservatives.
The Labour Party is taking this up a notch as its Net Zero plans could also be supported by bumper investments from the new mega-pension funds. (2)
Great British Energy has been established as a vehicle for the Government to invest in renewable technologies in the hope it will encourage the private sector to then follow suit.
However, with private finance inching away as the economics becomes less attractive (3), and the political headwinds strengthening as a result of the election of a man-made climate change sceptic in Donald Trump, then the UK Net Zero drive will need to tap into super-pension funds for state support.
And, will GB Energy also be interested in buying land for renewable developments. We shall have to wait and see?
Planning Changes
Further Net Zero levers are being pulled by the Government in its approach to the planning system.
On taking power Labour was keen to signal its intent to invest in UK infrastructure, and to do so it needs to overhaul the notoriously slow planning system.
Nick Winser, the electricity networks commissioner, recently identified how major electricity transmission projects can currently be up to 14 years ‘from identification to commissioning’.
The recently-published Clean Power 2030 report, by the National Energy System Operator, suggests cutting planning times from years to just months. (4)
The Government’s first move has been to mandate the country’s 317 local authorities to allocate land for renewable energy - and associated infrastructure - rather than merely ‘considering allocating’ such land.
In the New year Labour will bring forward further proposals in the Planning And Infrastructure Bill which it says will ‘unlock clean power by 2030 and provide the housing and infrastructure communities need’.
One senior planner, with decades of experience in development across the UK, described the proposed planning changes as 'underwhelming', and will leave its Net Zero ambitions floundering.
“While around a third of councils will willingly comply, as it aligns with their green ideology, and a further third may comply because they need more cash, the remaining third will ignore these recommendations - and in a situation like this there is nothing the Government can do,” he said.
Rural councils - such as Durham and Northumberland - where average farm sizes far exceed most other UK locations - will come under most pressure to support these developments but neither of these have identified climate action as one of their top four priorities.
As well as industrialising the countryside the Government's Net Zero push aims to cut human CO2 emissions by 10%, by encouraging people to eat less meat, this will involve a concomitant reduction in the national livestock herd and a focus on lab-grown meat.
A Path To Self Destruction
On taking office Labour announced plans to triple UK onshore solar to 50GW and double onshore wind to 35GW to achieve Net Zero by 2030.
Both of these renewables are only viable with guaranteed prices and the energy they produce is expensive, and unreliable, despite the misleading claims of the renewable lobbyists.
Left to the market, renewables wouldn’t stand a chance against hydrocarbons.
These prices for UK renewables makes our electricity the most expensive in the world and three times the price of competitor countries such as the US.
The Labour Government has no self-doubt when it comes to the future UK energy grid despite the scepticism of many and the dubious science upon which Net Zero is based (5).
If it gets its way, households in the UK face blackouts and situations where only the wealthy will be able to afford to heat their homes on cold winter days when the sun does not shine and the wind’s not blowing.
Labour’s vacuous claims we will be Net Zero by 2030 belie reality and its on-going, sinister manipulations designed to support that goal are dangerous to the UK economy, landscape and its people.
If the Government gets its way it will destroy swathes of the UK agricultural base, lose billions of pounds of pensioners’ cash in loss-making renewable investments, whilst industrialising the countryside with thousands of pylons, cables, solar panels and bird-killing windmills.
ENDS
- https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/cfd-solar-strike-price-increases-by-30/
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gve4d8jljo
- . https://www.ft.com/content/f8ce30e8-6847-4f19-99ba-994844d780bc
- . https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/11/07/britains-electricity-revolution-will-fail-without-planning/
- https://mamjammedia.blogspot.com/2024/07/blaming-co2-is-analog-answer-to-climate.html
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