Solar farms and the trouble with net zero

Say it quietly, especially when there’s a Green listening: but there’s one certainty about Net Zero 2050. It won’t happen. As any honest MP will admit in private, it is stymied not only by the need to keep the lights on following the Ukraine energy shortage, but also for another reason: because no democratic majority will tolerate the cutbacks in their quality of life necessary to maintain the headlong dash to carbon neutrality in 27 years’ time.

Unfortunately there is also another certainty about Net Zero. While it remains official policy, however quixotic, corporate capital is being handed a heaven-sent opportunity at the expense of you, me and the country we live in. If you don’t believe this, ask anyone who lives in rural East Anglia, between Newmarket and Soham.

Three years ago, a company called Sunnica proposed taking some 2,500 acres – four square miles – of good agricultural land in the area out of production and submerging much of it in photovoltaic plastic.