Spotlight on solar farms

• Date: 01 February 2015
• Author: Daphne Comfort,Peter Jones,David Hillier
• Published date: 01 February 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1482

■Research Note

Spotlight on solar farms

Peter Jones

1

*, Daphne Comfort

1

and David Hillier

2

1

Business School, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

2

Centre for Police Sciences, University of South Wales, Pontypridd UK

Solar energy is themost abundant of all renewable energy sources,and the development pressures for solar farms have

grown rapidlyin the last 5 years within the UK. With this in mind, thispaper outlines the characteristics of solar farms,

describes their development within the UK, examines some of the issues raised by these developments and offers a

concluding discussion of the contributions that public and media relations firms can make to thedevelopment of solar

farms. The paper reveals that solar farms have been developed on both agricultural land and brownfield sites and that

the developmentpressures are greatest in the SouthWest and South East of England.The findings reveal that proposals

to develop solarfarms have generated a wide rangeof environmental, communityand economic issues and that public

relations companies have an important role to play in fostering the transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of

energy. Copyright© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

‘Developments in the energy sector impact directly

on the global economy, the environment and every-

day life in a wide variety of ways and the energy

sector has important messages it needs to communi-

cate to governments, businesses and consumers.

Public relations is a valuable, engaging and cost ef-

fective platform for getting these messages across.’

Aspectus PR (2013)

INTRODUCTION

As countries face the need to reduce exposure to

volatile fossil fuel energy prices and greenhouse

gas emissions and improve the security of energy

supplies, so renewable energy sources are becoming

increasingly important. The European Renewable

Energy Council (2010) has set out ‘a 100% renew-

able energy vision for The European Union’and

has analysed ‘the economic, environmental and

social benefits likely to accompany such a transition’.

Arguably more realistically, if less ambitiously, the

UK Government is committed to meeting 15% of

the nation's energy needs from renewable sources

by 2020, as part of its strategy to reduce greenhouse

gas emissions and reduce dependency on imported

energy supplies. Looking further ahead, the UK

Government has suggested ‘renewables will also

have a crucial role to play in the UK energy mix in

the decades beyond, making the most of the UK's

abundant natural resources’(Gov UK, 2013). One of

the core principles within the National Planning

Policy Frameworkis that ‘planning should.....support

the transition to a low carbon future in a changing

climate’by, inter alia, ‘the development of renewable

energy’(Department for Communities and Local

Government 2012).More specifically, the National

Planning PolicyFramework stresses the need‘to help

increase the supply of renewable and low carbon

energy, local authorities should recognise the

responsibility on all communities to contribute to

energy generation from renewable and low carbon

sources’(Department for Communities and Local

Government 2012).

The development of energy resources has

traditionally had a wide range of contested impacts

on the economy, the environment and everyday life,

focused for example, on nuclear power and the

reprocessing of nuclear fuels, major oil spills in

marine environments, the closure of coal mines

and the effect on coalfield communities and more

*Correspondence to: Peter Jones, Business School, University of

Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK.

E-mail: pjones@glos.ac.uk

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 15 Number 1 pp 14–21 (2015)

Published online 5 August 2013 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1482

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.