Green Party and solar energy.
These two things are things you would expect to be inseparable bedfellows given the party's environmentalist credentials.
However, the situation is more complicated in some rural areas of England where the Green Party saw a spike in support during the most recent local elections.
Even though the party is passionate about using renewable energy, some of its council members in England have voiced local opposition to solar farms.
The opposition to solar farms, despite the council members' claims that they had valid reasons for doing so, conflicts with their party's national energy policy, which calls for a quick switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
The apparent contradiction was not missed by the party's detractors, who charged some Greens with hypocrisy for opposing clean energy.
The UK government's goal of having net-zero emissions by 2050 will require a significant expansion of solar energy. The Conservatives are primarily to blame for this since they are currently in power.
The Greens aren't completely blameless, though. Their choices to oppose some solar farms have an impact on our energy system and create the impression that local concerns are more important than international objectives.
One Green councilor, Frank Adlington-Stringer, has previously opposed a solar farm.
Before he was chosen to serve on the North East Derbyshire Council in 2021, Mr. Adlington-Stringer outlined his opposition to a solar farm in the region in a newspaper article.
His main concerns, he claimed, included "the loss of green space" and "the restriction of already scarce habitats.".
Government planning inspectors ultimately decided to reject the application. A local Green councilor at the time stated that "younger generations are very concerned about the effects of climate change, and might see things differently.".
Mr. Adlington-Stringer, 25, did not, at least not in this instance. Although he says he is not against solar farms, he thinks they shouldn't be given "priority" status.
He asserts, "We shouldn't be exchanging green spaces for green energy.".
Before she was elected in 2021, Julia Hilton, another member of the Green Party, ran an anti-solar farm campaign in Hastings.
The Hastings Country Park Green Party organized a protest against proposed solar panels in agricultural fields even though it lacked any councillors at the time.
The government's environmental adviser, Natural England, stated that the project "would result in significant landscape and visual impacts," which led the Labour-led council to abandon the project.
Those who oppose the construction of an unsightly structure close to their home are sometimes referred to as "NIMBYs," an acronym for "not in my backyard.".
Ms. Hilton, who is currently the leader of the Green group on the Hastings Borough Council, recoils at the idea of using the "NIMBY argument" in this situation.
The proposed location was "incompatible with a solar farm, which would industrialize this very precious landscape habitat," the author claims.
Regardless of the individual merits of solar energy proposals, the optics of Green politicians opposing renewable energy have raised uncomfortable questions for the party's leadership.
Greens "see an important role for solar farms as part of the mix," according to Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.
The BBC quotes him as saying, "It's not about being ideological. "[The solar application] must be evaluated on its own merits. ".
He argues that solar farms are not a political issue for his party and points out that Greens are in favor of them in Oxfordshire, Lancaster, and Kent.
In the next ten years, according to Mr. Ramsay, the Greens want to see 100 gigawatts (GW) of solar energy produced in the UK, with three quarters coming from rooftop panels and a quarter from farms.
additional rooftop solar. We frequently hear this request from the Green Party, which has been pushing to require solar panels on the roofs of all suitable new homes.
Will rooftops be able to fill our solar-shaped hole on their own?
Restricting affordable, utility-scale solar, according to Simon Evans, deputy editor of Carbon Brief, would make the goal of net zero "even more challenging.".
By 2035, the UK's solar capacity is to be increased to 70 GW, according to the government's energy security strategy. The UK's rooftops couldn't accommodate that much solar capacity, according to Mr. Evans.
The government's climate adviser pegged the rooftop potential at a maximum of 37GW in a report. Even if it were feasible to install 70GW of solar on UK rooftops, Mr. Evans notes that doing so would be significantly more expensive.
Despite this kind of evaluation, some Greens and other parties continue to oppose the construction of solar farms in Suffolk.
Earlier this year, two Green council members on Mid-Suffolk Council sided with four Tories to oppose a solar farm near Somersham. A plan to construct one of Europe's largest solar farms on the Suffolk-Cambridgeshire border, which has the capacity to power 172,000 homes, has run into fierce opposition.
The proposed Sunnica Energy Farm is a "symptom of a wider problem," according to Andrew Stringer, the first Green district councillor elected in Suffolk in 2003.
He holds the Conservatives accountable for the inaction on passing legislation to increase the amount of solar installed on roofs. He insists that a solar farm must "make sense" and that, if it does not, and a Green council member cannot reconcile their opposition with their party's national policy, "we embrace that.".
He explains, "It's called democracy.
The Green Party made record gains in the local elections held in May thanks to democracy, especially in some rural areas that have a history of supporting the Conservatives. The party's support has grown beyond its core urban voters as a result of its shift to the countryside.
The party has created "a possibly unstable coalition, requiring some degree of hypocrisy, like their NIMBY stance," according to political scientist Dr. James Dennison.
Due to their environmental ideology, the Greens "are in danger of letting this narrative of hypocrisy spread and more so than for other parties given their support for solar farms," warned Dr. James Dennison, a party expert.
More than locally, this would harm their performance nationally. ".
Is there a temptation to concentrate on courting the kind of rural voters who object to solar farms as the Greens look to add parliamentary seats to their existing council ones?
In the recently held local elections, "we put across our values and people came behind them very strongly, including in Suffolk and many rural areas around the country," says Mr. Ramsay, who is eyeing a seat in the rural Suffolk area.
"The general election will be the same.
. "
