Almost 4000 hectares of New Zealand farmland have been leased or sold to foreign-owned solar companies over the past four years without first being offered to New Zealand interests, under exemptions granted by the Overseas Investment Office.
OIO records reveal multiple solar projects over the past four years have included largely leasehold deals with the companies, extending from the Far North to Otago. The total area acquired is 3917ha.
Normally, under overseas investment regulations when overseas interests wish to acquire farmland that is classed as sensitive under the Overseas Investment Act, it must be offered for acquisition on the open market to New Zealanders first.
The prescriptive rules require at least 30 working days both online and in print.
The scale of the exempted projects leased to overseas interests varies between a 53ha project near Auckland, to a 460ha project this year in Taranaki, leased to Stratford Solar, a joint project between Contact and Lightsource, a global solar energy developer. The approval of 1536ha to NZ Clean Energy Ltd does not appear in the latest OIO exemption updates (see accompanying article).
Acquisition of land for solar projects was particularly intense in 2023 when 1750ha was obtained for leasing.
Solar projects dominate the OIO’s exemptions list, and the office is required to state the reasons for exempting companies from seeking local interest.
Typically, on most of the exemptions the office states that publicising the property increases risks around alerting the foreign company’s competitors to the location of the project, increasing likelihood of those competitors acquiring it.
In the case of leasehold land it usually also notes the use is temporary, some of it will also still be used for grazing, and it is not a permanent loss of New Zealanders’ opportunity to buy the land given the leasehold arrangement.
Farmland leases for solar projects typically run for a lengthy 35 years.
The creep of unadvertised, exempted solar leases across farmland has rung alarm bells with Federated Farmers.
Feds energy spokesperson Greg Anderson said the stealthy nature of the solar conversions will be of huge concern to a lot of farmers and Federated Farmers is watching closely.
“There are a lot of similarities with the carbon farming situation, where there could be a lot of unintended consequences further down the line. When there’s no public consultation, you don’t know these solar farms are going in until they’re already up – but by then it’s too late.”
He called for greater transparency around the projects to ensure communities are aware of what is going on, and to give greater opportunity for scrutiny.
“Land Information NZ’s own guidance says a solar farm may stop being a farm once it’s built. That means a later sale to an overseas buyer may not face the farmland rules that a normal farm sale would.”
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