November 2023
Dear Constituent,
Thank you for your email regarding solar farms.
Following similar correspondence from other residents, I wrote to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero requesting a formal government response. A copy of the response that I received from the Rt Hon Graham Stuart MP can be found immediately below this email.
With best wishes.
Kind regards,
Jonathan Lord MP
Member of Parliament for Woking
Dear Jonathan,
Thank you for your email of 12 October on behalf of your constituent regarding solar power.
I am grateful to you for raising [your constituent’s] concerns about the Government’s support for solar power; in the Net Zero Strategy the Government committed to sustained increase in deploying renewable generation technologies, including solar, in the 2020s and beyond. We are aiming for 70 gigawatts of ground-mount and rooftop solar capacity by 2035, which would be a more than fourfold increase of our current installed capacity. We need to maximise deployment of all types of solar to achieve this ambition.
As stated in the Government’s Energy Security Plan, we want to see more large-scale ground-mount solar deployment across the UK, albeit sensitive to local communities and mainly delivered on brownfield, industrial and low and medium grade agricultural land. The UK’s flagship Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme is the main mechanism to incentivise large scale renewable generation, including solar. Allocation Round 5 was launched in March 2023 and was the first CfD round to run on an annual basis in line with the Government’s commitment to increase the frequency of auctions to quicken the pace of the rollout of new renewable energy projects in Great Britain. On 8 September, it was announced that 56 ground-mounted solar projects, totalling 1.9GW capacity, were awarded contracts in Allocation Round 5.
Alongside this, the Government will publish a solar roadmap in 2024, setting out a clear step by step deployment trajectory in line with the Independent Review of Net Zero recommendation. We have established the UK Solar Taskforce, which I co-chair, which brings together key players from the Government, industry, regulatory and other relevant organisations to drive forward the actions needed to deliver the 70 gigawatts target of combined domestic and industrial rooftop and ground mount solar capacity by 2035. Further details on the taskforce’s membership and remit can be found at:
www.gov.uk/government/groups/solar-taskforce
Thank you again for taking the time to write.
Yours ever,
Rt Hon Graham Stuart MP
Minister of State for Energy Security and Net Zero