Recommendation 20

It is unclear whether Ministers will maintain the current position whereby grade 3b agricultural land is available for ground-mounted solar installations. We recognise that the Government must balance the needs of energy security with biodiversity protection and food production. Nevertheless, moves to limit the land available for solar installations will make it harder to achieve the Government’s stated ambition in the British Energy Security Strategy to increase solar capacity to 70GW by 2035. We recommend that the Government set out, in its response to this report, its assessment of the likely impact that reducing the classes of land available for ground mounted solar would have on its ability to achieve its own target of 70GW target by