The Existing Solar PV Footprint in The UK Is Significantly Less Than That Of A Golf Course

The total installed capacity of solar power in the UK is currently around 14 GW. According to analysis by trade body Solar Energy UK, 9.6 GW of this capacity is ground-mounted PV plants. Each megawatt of power requires around six acres of land, which means that the area currently covered by ground-mounted solar is estimated at 230 square kilometres, which represents less than 0.1 per cent of the UK's land area.

In comparison, agricultural land covers 56% of the UK's area, with around 70,000 km2 used for cattle and sheep grazing and around 67,000 km2 for growing cereals and pulses. As the map above shows, there is less existing solar PV (dark yellow) than land currently in use than golf courses (red) and airports (orange), which cover 1,256 square kilometres and 493 square kilometres respectively.

In April this year, the UK government released a new energy security strategy with plans to increase solar power generation by a factor of five by 2035, with a further 38 GW of ground-mounted solar PV plants to be installed. As solar technologies become more efficient, the area required is lower than with existing technologies. For example, double-sided panels can make use of the sunlight on both sides of the PV panel.

The UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy suggests that future solar PV will require between two and four acres of land to produce one megawatt of electricity. Assuming an average of 3 acres per 1 MW, if the UK achieves its goal of quintupling solar power generation, ground-mounted PV in the UK will cover nearly 700 square kilometres of land by 2035, equivalent to 0.3% of the UK's land area.

Ground-mounted photovoltaic plants are built on several types of land. Even if all future ground-mounted solar were built on farmland, the impact of land use change on UK food production would be minimal. This can be illustrated by an extreme example: if all 700 square kilometres of land used to meet the UK's ground-mounted solar PV target was used for land previously used for growing wheat, and the average hectare of land in the UK produced around 8 tonnes of wheat per year. This means that in theory 700 square kilometres could produce 560,000 tonnes of wheat. Based on 2021 figures, even in this extreme example, this represents only 4% of the annual UK wheat production.