Rishi Sunak is wrong to use food security as an excuse for blocking solar farms - Yorkshire Post Letters

The latest from Rishi Sunak is that he will bring in new powers to block solar farms. His claim that it’s to protect food security is simply wrong.

The amount of land required for solar panels is tiny, no more than is used today by golf courses or horse paddocks.

On the other hand, a failure to reach Net Zero will have a massive impact on the viability and productivity of farmland, both in the UK and abroad.

For us ‘hard-pressed families’, food security means food affordability - from the money left after paying our energy bills. The impact of climate change on food production is bad enough in the UK, but even worse in many of the countries that we rely on for imports.

This is not rocket science. Food security, energy security, climate change and affordability are all linked. Equally, the government’s actions are also linked: Keep us dependent on expensive and dirty fossil fuels as long as possible by failing to improve insulation and stop us having access to cheap and clean renewable energy.

It may be OK if you are rich enough to live in the countryside away from our polluted towns and cities, and can afford to pay what you like to put food on the table.

For someone like Mr Sunak who doesn't have to worry about such trivia, no doubt he would rather not look out onto a solar farm or wind turbine producing clean and cheap energy for the people he is supposed to represent.

For the rest of us, already furious about the recent offshore wind auction that was bound to fail, please let’s stop pretending that he is protecting our interests.