Forest solar farm idea 'interesting' - and 'daft'

The idea of turning part of one of England's best-known forests into a solar farm is "interesting", according to a leading climate change researcher.

Two Conservative members of Norfolk County County have suggested putting solar panels in Thetford Forest, which occupies more than 18,000 hectares (45,000 acres) on the Norfolk-Suffolk border.

But Asher Minns, executive director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, suggested farmland would be a better site for the panels.

And David Hook, of the Norfolk branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, told the BBC that putting solar panels in the forest would be "daft".

Conservative councillor Fabian Eagle told BBC Radio Norfolk that turning a small part of Thetford Forest into a solar farm would be better than using "very, very" productive farmland.

Eagle said his "preferred" choice would be fixing solar panels to buildings, but that a solar farm in the forest was another option.

"The actual idea would would be to take up a small proportion of Thetford Forest and turn it over to solar panels, which would allow the restoration of the heathland which was absorbed by the Thetford Forest in the 1920s when it was deemed wasteland," he said.

Fellow Tory councillor Jane James said, when "managed well", biodiversity and solar energy panels could "sit side-by-side".

She said rare species could thrive in the covered space underneath solar panels.

Mr Minns said the idea was "interesting" and told BBC Radio Norfolk: "I really welcome that people are thinking about where solar needs to go because that itself is a national emergency."

But he added: "I suspect Thetford has more value for nature and the carbon that's being stored away in its trees."

He suggested farmland would be a better option for the panels.

"Farmland is not what people think it is, perhaps," he said.

"Most farmland is very intensively cropped. It releases carbon; the soils are forever disturbed.

"It looks nice, brown and green countryside, but it does 'nothing for nature'."

Mr Minns added: "I think a lot of farmland would actually benefit from mega solar, because it's for a period of time, say 30 years."

He said that would allow the land to be rested and for soils to recuperate to allow biodiversity to come back.

But Mr Hook, who co-ordinates the CPRE Norfolk light pollution campaign, told the BBC: "I think it's an absolutely daft idea,"

He said the UK was one of the "most-forest depleted nations in the world" and that Thetford Forest was part of a "unique landscape".

He added: "It's definitely not a place to cover with solar panels.

Mr Hook said putting solar panels on roofs and "artificial surfaces" was the way forward.

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