Labour’s new pet project GB Energy will build the nation’s biggest solar farm in the British countryside – after hiring a German company to deliver the plans.
A public consultation has taken place for the 4,000-acre High Grove Solar Farm, which will see solar panels capable of generating enough energy to run 363,000 homes a year erected around Dereham, Norfolk.
Reform UK MP Richard Tice has attacked the decision to use German firm RWE to deliver the plan, as well as the decision to partially use farmland.
“It’s doubly mad,” he said. “No solar farms should be built on farmland. Labour lied to us they said there would be green British jobs but we learn it [sic] will be German”.
His criticism was shared by George Freeman, the MP for Mid Norfolk, the constituency where the farm would be built.
He told Daily Express that the creation of the solar farm, which would become the UK’s largest, would “hit our Mid Norfolk tourism industry hard”.
He said: “The massive Pylon & Cabling infrastructure across Norfolk has massive environmental and agricultural and economic costs and disruption – to a rural county reeling from the cost of living crisis and pandemic. Tourism is our number one industry and this scale of development will hit our Mid Norfolk tourism industry hard.”
Meanwhile Clare Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, slammed the project as “war on the countryside”.
She told Daily Express: “Ed Miliband’s headlong rush to meet his 2030 decarbonisation target means he has to triple the UK’s solar power capacity in just five years.
“That means he’ll have to ignore the concerns of local residents and force through large-scale solar farms, wind turbines and pylons on our best agricultural land.“Miliband is desecrating the British countryside for a technology that only produces electricity 10% of the time. He should end this war on the countryside and focus on reliable nuclear power instead.”
Former Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy minister Kwasi Kwarteng questioned whether the project is good “value for money”.
“I get the whole push towards net zero and clean energy and all the rest of it,” he said. “But it’s got to have local consent, on the one hand, and secondly, it’s got to be value for money.”
The former Chancellor also expressed concern that Labour’s Great British Energy project – which promises to “drive clean energy deployment” – may compromise the government’s ability to ensure adequate domestic energy stock.
“I think there’s a real danger that we could have significant energy shortages towards the end of the parliament, [in] the next three or four years.”
He went on: “Yes we all want to fight climate change, but we’ve got to do it an affordable way and we’ve got to have the consent of our people.
“I think the danger with Labour is that they’re very ideological, they’re in hoc to, frankly, extremist groups – Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil – and they’re going to impose costs on people when they can’t afford them.”
The consultation process for the High Grove Solar Farm was scheduled to finish in October, according to RWE, and the review of that process is underway. The submission of a Development Consent Order is expected in late 2025.
A Department for Energy Security & Net Zero spokesperson said:“Our mission for clean homegrown power will make our country energy secure, protect consumers, create jobs, and tackle the climate crisis.
“Solar is at the heart of this mission and even in the most ambitious scenarios it would still occupy less than 1% of the UK’s agricultural land, often of the lowest grade quality for food production.
“We are also reversing a legacy of no new nuclear power being delivered, including through Sizewell C, ensuring the long-term security of the sector, boosting our energy security while creating thousands of skilled jobs.”
