Come on, Essex, we can do better with solar!

David Knight, CPRE Essex chairman, is cheered by intelligent use of solar power in Cambridge but would like to see his own county also get up to speed with this important technology. 

The CPRE national policy on solar farms is very clear. We need them as one alternative source of energy, but there are plenty of places to site them other than on best arable land. (Best arable land is, I am delighted to say, in abundance in Essex.) We believe that rooftops, car parks and disused brownfield sites must be the first option.

To that end, I was delighted when visiting Cambridge recently and parking at the Babraham Road park-and-ride site to be welcomed by a delightful experience.

As an electronics engineer of old, it was uplifting to be confronted by what was always a large and well planned and maintained site that now finds itself cloaked in solar-panel arrays that not only provide power to charge EV parking there but also, I believe in times of spare capacity, electricity for the grid.

In addition, as a bonus in this time of global warming, it gives shelter to the cars parked there from the hot summer sun – and in my case the other day shelter from a downpour while I removed damp clothing before getting into my car!

I do not intend to go into the site planning and technical details as Cambridgeshire County Council has published an excellent write-up here. Nevertheless, you can see from the photographs how futuristic it looks.

Cambridge also has similar installations at other park-and-ride sites.

So, come on, Essex: CPRE want to see this type of installation across the county and very soon. Moreover, a note to the political class:

“Arable land-use should be the last resort, not the first, for solar farms”