Communities must benefit too...
We have an opportunity to require that Solar Farms make very substantial commmunity benefit payments, to be invested in nature recovery, decarbonisation and fairness.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is promising to deliver a package of “community benefits” for households near solar farms and other power infrastructure. However, the details are unclear.
Currently, these community benefits payments are often trivial, say, some free solar panels on the village hall. However, the Scottish Government, as well as the trade body RenwablesUK, recommends much more significant voluntary payments of £5,000/MW per year indexed with inflation for the life of the scheme, say 20-40 years.
We want to see community benefit payments on this scale become mandatory and the money invested in local decarbonisation and nature recovery. This is only fair to the affected communities, and the results could be transformational.
For example, some years ago, smart negotiation of a very substantial mitigation settlement from the 46MW solar farm at Shingay-cum-Wendy, a village to the west of Cambridge, enabled the creation of the beautiful 80 acre Mill River Reserve nearby. The creators point out that this “has successfully transformed previously intensively farmed land into an oasis of biodiverse habitats and restored the moribund chalk stream, leading to the return of the emblematic brown trout after a 40 year absence.”
Vine Solar Farm near Shingay-cum-Wendy, with Mill River Reserve to the South.
Currently, Downing Renewables is consulting on building a massive 500MW “Kingsway Solar Farm” in Balsham Ward near Haverhill. They don’t specify the community benefits payments they’re offering, but if they could be persuaded to pay the recommended sum, this would work out as £2.5M a year, or an index linked £50M over 20 years.
A local resident has pointed out to us that 95% of homes there are not on gas. And as most are heated by oil, a package of community benefits focussed on decarbonisation would be really useful.
If say, 40%, was invested in local decarbonisation, all 1000 homes in the affected community could have £20K’s worth of free or heavily subsidised;
heat pumps;
eV chargers;
domestic solar panels;
battery storage, and
home energy efficiency improvements,
These measures could reduce everyone’s energy costs to near zero, well within the 20 year minimum life of the solar farm.
The remaining 60% could be used to support nature recovery, decarbonisation and fairness in the wider community. For example,
new wildlife habitats;
better bus services;
safer cycle routes, and
lower energy bills for those in fuel poverty.
Interestingly Downing Renewables is a B Corp, that says they “[make] investments based on both their profitability and their environmental and social impact”. So we think they should offer the full recommended community benefits package of an index linked £5,000/MW per year.
The decarbonisation funds could be managed by Cambridgeshire’s well established programme “Action on Energy” which already administers various government grant schemes locally.
Do join us in calling for Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge MP and Farming Minister) and Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, to work together in 2025 to make this level of community benefit a reality nationwide.