Why not question land being lost to golf courses instead or targeting solar developments? - Yorkshire Post Letters

In The Yorkshire Post of January 12 the main front page article and main editorial are devoted to what I can only describe as a diatribe against solar farms noting towards the end of the latter that land lost will never be returned.

The briefing pack from the House of Commons library on solar energy suggests that to reach the national net zero target solar farms will take up 70,000 hectares of land, about 0.3 per cent of the national land area by 2035, and between 0.4 and 0.6 per cent of land by 2050.

Another consumer of farmland (to pick only one) are golf courses. Currently these take up 118,000 hectares of land, well above the amount anticipated for solar farms in 2035, and close to the maximum expected by 2050.

Golf courses take up more than 2.5 per cent of the land in Surrey, the West Midlands and Merseyside. There is no campaigning against this loss of land which is no more permanent than land used for solar farms but which is taken out of current use while the land under solar panels is available for grazing by sheep, and hand harvested crops such as lettuce and berries can also be grown under them.

Yes of course roofs can be used for solar, and all new build should require solar and battery storage built in, but solar farms are more important for the grid and are part of the future energy mix that we need.