Steve Gummer and Steve Cirell stress the importance of strategy at a local authority level when it comes to solar PV projects.
This year under the Green Steve’s programme we are going to focus on two key areas: solar and wind energy. Having published the first paper with an introduction to wind energy and guidance in relation to on shore wind energy projects by local authorities, we have stepped back from that subject for now in the hope that promised Government reforms are given time to come forwards.
So for the next period, we will focus on solar PV projects and take a deeper dive into the issues involved and how to steer a successful project through delivery. As the energy crisis last year bit deeper, many more local authorities looked at the potential for solar and these papers are intended to assist them in formulating plans and driving them forwards.
Of course, this year is also likely to be an election year in the UK. Whilst this will have implications across the economy, those involved in renewable energy (and solar PV in particular) will be keenly interested in how these areas fare. Prime Ministers come and go and after the departure of Boris Johnson, who was regarded as a friend to the green agenda, Rishi Sunak has eventually aspired to the top job in Government. Whilst this might change at the end of this calendar year, it is necessary to look at the current position for Government policy.
What is Government policy trying to achieve?
Perhaps the place to start is – what is Government policy trying to achieve here?
It must surely be the creation of a framework that will facilitate the introduction of a low carbon economy into the UK, resulting in lower greenhouse gas emissions, more renewable energy, a share of the world renewable energy technology market and no lowering of prosperity. However, there are different ways to do this and a different pace for the implementation of Government policy can also be determined. To date, since the current Prime Minister came to office, the signs have not been good.
The wider framework
Policy and legislation are, of course, intertwined. The legislation sets the targets and the framework within which the system will work and the policy maps how to get to those targets are then developed. In the UK the law is made by Parliament. The UK is no longer part of the EU block since its withdrawal from the European Union, but it does still participate directly in the Intergovernmental Conferences and engage in international climate change work.
Internationally, the UK still plays a leading part in those intergovernmental conferences, the latest of which was COP 28 in the United Arab Emirates. In order to remain in such a leading role, the UK has to demonstrate that it is fully committed to reaching Net Zero. The current period of domestic political turbulence has not helped this.
In the UK itself, it is the Climate Change Act 2008 that provides the legally binding targets to reach a position of Net Zero by 2050. However, there are a whole array of other provisions around the basic legal target: the Government is advised by the independent Climate Change Committee, carbon budgets are set for each five years and various reporting requirements to Parliament are in place.
The Climate Change Committee has recently announced that the UK has secured the third carbon budget, with a small surplus. This means it has now reached the required levels for the first three carbon budgets but it is far from clear whether this will be the case with the fourth and current one (2023 – 27). It is generally regarded that the country is falling behind on its commitments, leading some to comment that it has lost is leadership position vis a vis the rest of the world.
Key policy areas
As mentioned previously, the Government is advised by the independent and very knowledgeable Climate Change Committee. It has indicated that it its criticisms of the current Government in relation to its progress on climate change is not about the targets for emissions reductions in the UK (which are set down by the 2008 Act) but the route map for getting there (which is developed by the Government). The UK was, of course, the first country in the world to set legally binding targets (under the Climate Change Act previously mentioned).
That route map is provided by the Government’s Net Zero Strategy, which has come in for some strident criticism and is currently the subject of formal legal proceedings.
The Net Zero Strategy
The Government had already made significant progress in developing individual policy areas, such as transport, heating, infrastructure, decarbonisation of the electricity network and so on. However, it was noted that there was no overarching policy document supporting the path to net zero and the Climate Change Committee had illuminated that there were yawning gaps in some areas. As it turned out, the impending approach of COP 26 (which the UK was hosting in Glasgow) was the push needed to get the Government to publish the document that was intended to serve this purpose. This is the Net Zero Strategy.
The Net Zero Strategy covers many areas, including reaching a net zero electricity system by 2035, decarbonising the transport sector and green finance and innovation. The CCC remarked that this was “a credible package that reflects the scale and breadth of the challenge. It is a material step forwards.” However, there was trouble ahead. This was because the published document was studied carefully by all interested parties and views were formed on its ability to ‘do what it said on the tin’. Some came rapidly to the conclusion that it was not only inadequate, but also unlawful.
A case of judicial review was brought in 2022 by a number of parties, including Friends of the Earth, Client Earth and the Good Law Project. Different arguments were put forward by each but essentially the point made was that the policies did not give a sufficient level of information to demonstrate that the targets would be met or provide any assurance that this would be the case.
On 18 July 2022 Mr Justice Holgate ruled against the Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and ordered that the Government rewrite the Net Zero Strategy to bring it into line with statutory requirements. This was a significant victory and sent a very clear message to the Government that people were watching whether it was sticking to the original plan to move strongly and irreversibly towards Net Zero.
In March 2023 the Government published another document to satisfy the Court judgement. This was called Powering Up Britain – the Net Zero Growth Plan. However, the applicants in the original judicial review thought that the document still did not meet the minimum legal requirements, because the new plan relied upon high risk and unproven technologies to tackle climate change as well as vague and uncertain proposals. Accordingly, they have continued to challenge the Government in successive actions which have not yet been completed.
The Committee on Climate Change is the independent adviser to the Government, as noted above, and has been increasingly critical of the Government’s present stance. It has said:
“The UK Government continues to rely on pie-in-the-sky measures to address a crisis that needs real, immediate action – an approach the UK’s flagship law the Climate Change Act was designed to prevent. Instead of plugging the gaps identified by their own expert advisors, Ministers are standing behind a strategy riddled with policy holes and reliance on risky techno-fixes. This approach flies in the face of key legal requirements and puts the UK well off track from meeting its legally binding commitments, which is why we’re back in court.”
The Prime Minister also made a speech on Net Zero in September 2023 which sought to ‘relieve the burden on working people’ by slackening off some of the targets forming part of the Net Zero plan, most notably by changing the date by which internal combustion engine cars cannot be sold in the UK from 2030 to 2035. This did not go down well with those seeking to accelerate action to reach Net Zero but also those wanting to create a stronger economy and putting in place plans to do so.
It seems that the impasse between the Conservative Government and the green lobby has further to run yet but may change course later this year (or early next) following the General Election.
The targets for solar
Interestingly enough, in parallel with the previously mentioned drama, the Government has recognised that solar PV offers a clear route forwards to increase substantially the UK’s renewable energy capacity (energy is, of course, only one facet of the wider climate change piece). There is approximately 15 GW (i.e. 15,000 MW) of solar PV now fitted and operational in the UK.
The majority of this capacity is formed by solar farms, which have continued to increase in size and the majority of new applications for such exceed 50 MW in capacity. Indeed, there are projects of hundreds of MW of capacity on single sites coming forwards. In England, such projects are classified as Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects and therefore the planning decision lies with the government rather than the local planning authority. In addition, there are well over a million homes now with solar panels on the roof and a growing sector for commercial and industrial roof installations.
In 2022 the Government decided to increase its target for solar PV in the UK substantially – to 70 GW by 2035. This was stated in the Energy Security Strategy (April 2022) and repeated in Powering Up Britain – the Net Zero Growth Plan (March 2023). This is a huge leap, bearing in mind that it was over five times the current installed capacity when the announcement was made. Whilst it does demonstrate a clear commitment to solar power and an expectation of many more projects, there is still much work to do to facilitate this.
Bearing in mind the magnitude of the task and to assist work towards the new target, the Government set up the Solar Taskforce. In its words, this was:
“To bring together key players from government, industry, regulatory and other relevant organisations to drive forward the increases in rooftop and ground mount solar needed to meet the expectation of a fivefold increase in solar PV deployment (up to 70GW) by 2035.”
The Taskforce has three key objectives, to help develop the strategic roadmap to get to the target, taking action to unlock deployment and securing investment and value for money by continually reducing costs. It has a deliberately wide remit and will look at all the areas of ground mounted and roof installations. All sectors are also included, including the domestic sector, commercial and industrial, public sector and community sector.
The Taskforce’s final report has been delayed and has not yet been released. However, it is rumoured to be largely complete. The main changes that local authorities looking at embarking on solar PV projects in the next few years can expect are likely to be around planning rules (ease of planning consent and permitted development) and on grid connections. In that latter context considerable work is being undertaken to unlock the problematic position currently existing regarding securing an affordable grid connection. This is centring round removing all of the proposed projects from the pipeline that have secured grid connections some time ago but where there are no plans to proceed to development at this current stage. If the Taskforce’s work is successful, costs should also fall further.
Local authority strategies
So how does all this relate to local authority projects? Firstly, there is now strong Government support for solar and this is unlikely to change. Secondly, there are moves afoot to make solar projects easier and hopefully even less expensive. Solar development is likely to accelerate. It is time for every local authority to have a solar strategy!.
The Green Steve’s will be going into more detail about how to develop a good local authority strategy but for this purpose the clear message is that this is a good time to add solar PV to a local authority’s wider plans. Most local authorities have either declared climate emergencies or formed climate change plans with targets towards Net Zero. These will increase the pressure to find new sources of renewable energy.
Many local authorities have surveyed their landholdings, looking for plots of land suitable for a solar farm. If this has not yet happened, it is a good start. Others have been introduced to rooftop solar via the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, although business cases work perfectly well without Government support. If a Council has not surveyed its roof space yet, this should also be a priority.
However, there are less obvious areas of development under consideration too. One is where a Council has some years ago fitted 50 kW of solar PV to half a dozen leisure centres (in order to benefit from FIT payments which were then available). If the roofs will host 300 kW, then another 250 kW can now be added. Another idea is the use of car parks, where overhead canopies can provide hosting for solar panels and increase the authority’s energy production substantially.
One that is widely relevant is commercial / industrial estates, within the ownership of local authorities but leased out to private occupiers. Here, the Council can fund and fit solar PV and then enter into a Power Purchase Agreement with the tenant to purchase the electricity at a rate that provides them with a handsome discount and the Council with a return on its investment.
Finally, there is social housing. There are still millions of Council houses in the UK untouched by solar panels and models are being developed to harness solar PV from those properties, perhaps in conjunction with battery storage, to generate and sell that energy. Both of these latter examples, crucially, also create a carbon offset value against the Council’s carbon footprint and therefore climate targets.
Conclusions
So whatever position your authority is in, now is the time to look in detail at solar power. In the remaining papers in this series the Green Steves will be focussing on all the relevant areas, including:
- Solar PV as part of a wider renewable energy/climate emergency/climate change strategy and the pressures on local authorities to deliver.
- The basics of solar PV for both buildings and solar farms (including the differences between buildings projects, solar farms, housing, car ports and so on) and choosing the best type of project.
- The business cases for developing solar (costs of development, income generated, grid and planning costs, how to maximise the revenue from energy use or sales).
- Planning consent and all the issues arising as part of a successful planning application.
- Grid connections (distribution or transmission network, dealing with Distribution Network Operators, solving problems).
- Delivery phase issues (everything from early feasibility, through Member approvals, procurement issues, construction and commissioning, including timeframes).
- Offsetting and carbon footprints (what can you claim an offset for).
- Communications strategies (ensuring the public is on board and that any objections can be managed).
- Legal documentation – procurement and construction phase as well as O&M Agreements.
- Legal documentation – power purchase agreements.
Each Green Steves paper will be followed by an explanatory video to consider the issues and engage in debate and questions.
As part of Sharpe Pritchard's commitment to helping local authorities innovate in the green space, infrastructure and energy partner Steve Gummer has teamed up with Steve Cirell, a Solicitor and Consultant who independently advises local authorities on climate change and renewable energy to produce a series of thought pieces about what local authorities could be doing to further the green agenda. They hope you have enjoyed reading the second in this series and for more please visit the Green Goals web page and follow them on LinkedIn.
For further information, please contact Steve Gummer, on 020 7405 4600.
