The United Kingdom countryside, immortalised over the centuries by renowned landscape painters, is undeniably beautiful.
Nowadays that distinctive landscape is being transformed by a renewable energy-driven push for solar and wind farms that, while angering locals, has overwhelming public support.
According to the UK solar industry, there are already more than 1300 solar farms, with more planned. In Lincolnshire alone, 6400 hectares of solar farms have been proposed.
According to a recent BBC report, three proposed farms in Norfolk will cover 95ha, 1619ha and 1133ha.
Solar now supplies just over 6% of UK electricity needs, and a government-commissioned survey shows solar is the most popular source of renewable energy, with 84% of the public in favour of it.
This dropped to 46% when respondents were asked how happy they would be to have a solar farm built nearby.
There never has been and never will be an ultimate use of land.
For much of past century the best use of land in New Zealand was transforming it from scrub, wetland and bush into pasture, primarily for sheep.
By the 1990s that focus had shifted to converting sheep farms to dairy and, more recently, from sheep and beef to forestry.
The food basket of Pukekohe, Waikato and Tauranga has seen vegetable farms and orchards paved over for housing.
Most of those land-use changes have been driven by economics and, understandably, landowners are protective of their right to sell to whoever they wish. It’s a cornerstone of a free and open economy.
The profitability and land value of dairying has meant that, apart from urban encroachment, it has largely been immune from competing land uses.
Now the economics of solar farms are competing with dairying, with a dairy farm in Taranaki and another in south Canterbury being converted.
As reported in Farmers Weekly last week, an estimated 2000ha of land has been consented for solar farms with a further 10,000ha under consideration by investors.
New wind farms are also being built and, like solar farmers, are creating angst among neighbours who are having their landscape altered.
Federated Farmers is leading the charge for some control on the expansion of renewable energy, using arguments similar to those invoked for forestry, the loss of food producing land, rural jobs and infrastructure.
The federation has to walk a fine line between advocating for rural communities and respecting property rights.
But there is an alternative.
Rewiring Aotearoa chief executive Mike Casey says New Zealand needs to double its energy production in the coming years, and the easiest way to avoid construction of large-scale solar farms is to install solar systems on farms, in businesses and homes.
Just 4% of New Zealand homes have solar, compared to nearly 40% in Australia, which Casey says is why the wholesale electricity price collapses in the middle of the day when energy production is at its maximum.
Renewable energy projects are only going to increase in the coming years, drawn to the most appropriate sites and proximity to the transmission network.
And as with previous land-use changes, locals will have limited influence.
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