Some 80,000ac of Irish land will be required for solar farms in the next 15 years. A startling statistic, revealed in Stephen Robb’s interview with Solar Ireland’s Ronan Power.
Solar development has exploded, and we are a quarter of the way towards meeting the State’s 2030 target of eight gigawatts of solar energy.
As Power explains, grid connections are complicated and difficult, prompting developers to plan large solar farms that justify the cost of connection. And it is predominantly larger solar farms that draw most objections from local communities.
They don’t view solar farms as positively transforming the country’s power source but instead as negatively transforming their landscapes, social and economic communities.
While solar farm proponents hail the cut in carbon emissions, critics argue that much of the new renewable energy will be gobbled up by power-hungry data centres.
Hot debate
The use of agricultural land for solar is hotly debated, with arguments for individual landowners’ property rights, warnings about carbon leakage by swapping Irish-grown food for imported produce, and more.
There are two sides to every argument, but a national conversation is needed. Central to that conversation is the Government’s national Land Use Review – which is nowhere to be seen.
The review was intended to address how land should be used, whether for agriculture, forestry, housing, or energy production, to align with climate, nature and socio-economic goals.
The review must be completed and published to inform a debate on how and where food and energy production can evolve together, rather than at the expense of one another.
SHARING OPTIONS