Isra-Mart srl : Cornwall's farmers to reap subsidies for 'green' electricity

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Isra-Mart SRL news:

The UK's first purpose-built solar farm has been given planning permission and the county's farmers are celebrating

Cornwall's farmers have more than the harvest festival to celebrate this autumn: the granting of planning permission for the UK's first purpose-built solar farm and a £14m loan for an even larger solar farm next to Newquay airport. The landmark decisions by Cornwall council, which gave the loan, are predicted to trigger a surge of similar applications from farmers and landowners across the county over the next 18 months, with the council estimating a potential total investment of £1bn for the county.

The bonanza was sparked by the introduction last April of the feed-in tariff, which pays anyone producing their own "green" electricity up to 41.3p/kWh – as long as the infrastructure is up and running by April 2012. Since giving the go ahead to the £4m solar farm at the former Wheal Jane tin mine near Truro last month, the council has become so convinced that it will be inundated with similar applications that it has allocated six planning officers to deal with the paperwork. Locals, who enjoy the highest levels of solar irradiation in the country, are calling it Cornwall's "solar rush".

The five-acre facility at Wheal Jane will generate 1.3MW of electricity from 6,000, two metre-high photovoltaic panels that can be angled at the sun as it moves across the sky. Unusually for such a large project, it faced no major objections. Councillors in neighbouring Gwennap parish supported the project with the proviso that any reflection of light from the panels be addressed.

It is a far cry from the uproar that typically greets any application for a wind farm. In 1991, Cornwall was home to the UK's first wind farm but, like other counties, it has witnessed fierce resistance to large turbines on the grounds that they are a blot on the landscape. Cornwall council hopes solar farms can be a trouble-free alternative and an important component of the county's growing portfolio of renewable energy sources, which is set to include major projects running off wave power and geothermal energy from beneath the granite bedrock.

But with farmers now being approached by solar developers offering tantalising deals to lease their land, there is some trepidation that solar farms are too good to be true. Are they just another get-rich-quick scheme the likes of which have so often been dangled before cash-strapped farmers? As so often in farming, profitability hinges on the availability of a subsidy – in this case, the feed-in tariff which, at least for the time being, remains, having escaped the wrath of yesterday's comprehensive spending review.