Gareth Simkins, senior communications adviser at Solar Energy UK, discusses the increasing benefits of adopting solar energy in the UK
Solar power is having a moment in the sun. It’s the cheapest source of electricity, immune from geopolitical crises, is zero-carbon, and it’s great for nature, too. As I write this on a sunny afternoon in April, it’s supplying a quarter of Great Britain’s power, and natural gas only 8%.
No wonder, then, that expanding solar energy was high on the Government’s agenda even before the war in Iran brought another spike in energy costs. From solar farms of nationally-significant scale, through warehouse roofs and community-owned installations on village halls, to home rooftop and plug-in systems, all have an enthusiastic thumbs-up from the Prime Minister down.
The technology is now increasingly seen as more than just a clean, green source of energy. It is now a vital aspect of national security, informing Labour’s ‘clean energy mission’ and promises of a ‘rooftop revolution’.
Solar security
Our chronic dependence on natural gas, upon which wholesale electricity prices are normally based, has left consumers with huge bills and placed a millstone around the neck of industry and the wider economy. Driving up renewable generation is clearly in our collective interest: whatever upset may arise, the sun will shine, the wind will blow, and water will flow.
Under the Coalition and the Conservatives – whose enthusiasm for solar waxed and waned – Great Britain’s solar generation capacity rose from almost nothing to about 19 gigawatts, going by industry estimates. Following the election, another six gigawatts or so have been added, a pace which is accelerating sharply.
In total, 15 gigawatts (GW) of capacity is now in place on the ground, the remainder split almost evenly between commercial-scale installations and smaller ones of 50 kilowatts or less. The latter is within the purview of the standards body MCS and is largely deployed in homes, where average power consumption is around 4 kilowatts.
Within days of the general election, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband approved three solar farms: Gate Burton in Lincolnshire, Sunnica on the Suffolk/Cambridgeshire border and Mallard Pass, on either side of the East Coast Mainline in Lincolnshire and Rutland. Their collective capacity of 1,350 megawatts (MW) accounted for about two-thirds of all capacity installed on rooftops and on the ground in 2024. Due to economies of scale, the bigger they are, the cheaper they are to build.
Approval of ten further large-scale solar projects (known as nationally significant infrastructure projects – NSIPs) has since followed, bringing the pipeline capacity to over six gigawatts.
Planning reforms
A few weeks into office, Labour opened a consultation on changing planning policy under the Town and Country Planning Act, to ease the delivery of solar farms at the local level. The National Planning Policy Framework was revised to enable local councils to give “significant weight” to the benefits of renewable energy. The revisions made the document more consistent with rules governing solar NSIPs, as set out in National Policy Statements (NPSs). NPS EN-3 declares them to be a “critical national priority” infrastructure, adding that their “national security, economic, commercial and net zero benefits” should generally outweigh any potential impacts.
“This is a package of reforms that should power up the solar market, moving the dial further towards decarbonisation and lower energy bills,” said Chris Hewett, chief executive of Solar Energy UK, at the time.
The Government also changed the definition of NSIPs, which in England are considered in Whitehall rather than at a local level. Only solar farms with a capacity of 100MW or more will now be referred to the central Government for determination, rather than those with a capacity of 50MW or more, as previously.
The decision was taken “primarily due to a higher threshold better reflecting the technological advances in solar technology since 2008, when the original threshold was set. Solar projects at the current threshold of 50MW are therefore unlikely to be of a scale, impact or complexity that is proportionate,” said the Government.
Food security
Another change struck out a provision added by the previous administration, which gave spurious grounds for local authorities to refuse solar farm applications by presenting them as a threat to food security.
Only weeks after the election, both the National Farmers Union and energy secretary Ed Miliband dismissed such fears out of hand. Solar farms take up too little land to have any meaningful impact: about 0.1% of the UK.
But who better to ask than farmers who have gone solar? In a video produced by Solar Energy UK, third-generation farmer Jonathan Keeling, of Crays Hall farm in Essex, said the attractiveness of hosting a solar farm is “having a steady income whilst allowing you to carry on farming”. The land he formerly used for agriculture, “wasn’t very profitable – so the solar panels have really helped,” he added.
It should be noted that farms lost an estimated £800m last year, following one of the worst harvests on record. Climate change is biting.
Overall, a total of 18.25GW of solar farms of all sizes now have planning consent; 27.5GW are in development or are waiting for a planning decision; and 4GW are in construction, according to Solar Energy UK’s SolarPulse market intelligence platform.
Future growth
The industry is well on the way to delivering on the goal of reaching 45-47 GW of groundmount capacity, as set by the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan. That also set a target of an extra 9-10GW on rooftops, bringing the total to 54-57GW by the end of the decade, up from 25GW now.
The overall strategy for scaling up the industry was agreed last year, in the Government’s Solar Roadmap. The fruit of two years’ engagement between Solar Energy UK and two administrations, it focuses on five key challenges: rooftop solar, grid access, supply chain, skills and planning policy.
Grid access is arguably the greatest of these. In many parts of the country, no substantial generation asset can be connected to the grid as the infrastructure has not been built to take the power. Chronic underinvestment has left waiting times for connections running into many years, although policy changes over the past few years will bring gradual improvements. Nevertheless, the state of the grid remains a major drag on the economy, energy security and decarbonisation.
For example, I know of a major manufacturing business that sought to install a few megawatts of solar panels at its factory in the north-west of England. That would put a huge dent in its energy bills and emissions alike – but it was told in 2024 that no connection could be made until the late 2030s, putting the project on hold. One may speculate on the risk to jobs that could be at risk as a result.
Fortunately, such issues rarely affect residential solar installations, as they are too small in scale to have a significant impact on the grid.
Residential solar
As widely reported, there has been a recent surge in the number of members of the public seeking to go solar, driven by the war in Iran. Though it is too soon to have had an impact on installation numbers, this year is likely to see even more added than last year, which set a new record. A total of 258,099 small-scale systems were installed over 2025, almost 60,000 more than in 2024, according to MCS records. The two millionth registration will come in weeks – perhaps by the time you read this.
Far from all of these installations are retrofits. Around 40% of new homes now come with solar panels pre-installed – though they tend to be rather small. That’s because they are installed as a cheap and easy way to meet the current ‘Part L’ energy efficiency requirements in the Building Regulations, rather than providing maximum value to the occupants.
So we were very glad to see that the Future Homes Standard (FHS) was finally signed off earlier this year, along with its twin, the Future Buildings Standard.
The FHS will all but mandate rooftop solar panels for newbuild properties, requiring at least 40% of the property’s energy needs to be met on site – putting the days of a couple of token panels on newbuilds firmly to bed.
The standards will be implemented from this year, coming fully into force in March 2027. Conventional gas boilers will not be permitted, with heat networks and heat pumps expected to become the standard for all newbuilds. Overall, homes built under the new standard will emit 75-80% less carbon than homes built to the current standard, becoming zero when the grid is fully decarbonised.
The first consultation on the FHS was launched in October 2019. A lot has happened since then – not least a million MCS solar installations. But two of the biggest changes have been solar power transitioning into what is essentially a cheap consumer product – and the cost of battery energy storage systems (BESS) is plummeting, too.
Battery energy storage
From the gigawatt-scale systems now in the pipeline to more modest ones that save households hundreds of pounds a year, the nation is benefitting from battery energy storage systems (BESS) technology at all scales.
Storing electricity is critical for the energy transition, enabling power to be stockpiled
when variable-output renewable supplies are plentiful and are discharged when demand is greatest. BESS can also reduce constraint payments – that is, when generators are paid to shut down because the grid cannot accept their power – while reducing the need for new, costly electricity transmission and distribution links. In parallel, co-locating BESS and solar panels allows limits on power export, put in place where the grid is weak, to be overcome, permitting larger systems to be installed.
The economics have never been better.
In early 2025, BloombergNEF found that global average prices for commercial-scale battery energy storage systems had fallen by 40% in one year, the biggest drop since its surveys began in 2017. International Energy Agency (IEA) data says that between 2010 and 2024, the dominant lithium-ion battery technology became 90% cheaper, offering longer service lifetimes and higher energy densities, too – driving a revolution on the roads and on the grid. Energy density has risen alongside operational lifetimes, too.
The seven years between their first conception and final confirmation explain BESS’s otherwise curious absence from the Future Homes Standard and Future Buildings Standard. If they were developed now, battery systems would be as obvious a feature as windows and a roof.
Alas, we will have to wait a few years before BESS becomes mandatory under the eventual successors to the standards. That said, it is better to have imperfect standards in place now than wait even longer for improvement.
Public perception
Support for renewable energy and solar specifically remains high among the general public, according to multiple surveys.
In the summer of 2025, DESNZ’s Public Attitudes Tracker found that only 13% of people would be unhappy or very unhappy with the construction of a local solar farm. Those were concentrated among older age groups (55+).
Support for reducing reliance on fossil fuels remains high. However, the public tends to assume that others are much less supportive of solar energy, according to research by Climate Barometer.
The effect is greatest among MPs, presumably because they receive a great deal of correspondence from the minority opposing solar farms.
But I think that the most fascinating observation from surveying the public is that the greatest support for the sector comes not from a well-educated urban elite, but from the people who live closest to solar farms. Once they are built, support leaps up as the myths, misinformation, and active disinformation swirl around solar farms fall away, according to the results of a Copper Consultancy report for Solar Energy UK.
Nature
Lastly, the biodiversity benefits of solar farms are something I have been shouting about for years, though they remain underappreciated by the public. Despite being a birdwatcher and keen naturalist since childhood, I had never seen a northern wheatear until I was on site in Lincolnshire last year.
But the industry doesn’t rely solely on anecdotal evidence. We have hundreds of ecological surveys and a wealth of academic studies demonstrating that the sector can be an absolute boon to the natural world. As noted by Solar Energy UK’s regular Solar Habitat reports, red-listed birds such as yellowhammers and linnets are seen on about half of the solar farms around the country. It’s far from unusual to see brown hares, badgers, roe deer and common shrews, too.
Evidence from the RSPB and Cambridge University indicates that solar farms can boost biodiversity, with three times as many birds in solar farms as in surrounding agricultural land in East Anglia.
As energy minister Michael Shanks said at the parliamentary launch of Solar Habitat 2025 last year, “We often hear that solar is a trade-off with nature, which is simply not the case. Solar power is a fundamental part of our clean power ambitions, strengthening our energy security and protecting bill payers, whilst supporting nature, farmers and local communities.”
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