Project director of Elements Green's Great North Road Solar Park plan Mark Noone speaks to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
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00:00 So you've gone through the first round of consultation now, do you think you're winning
00:04 local residents around to your side?
00:06 Yeah, I think the ground is certainly interesting in terms of the way people think about the
00:13 project. We had a consultation where we went out to 5,000 people, we had 550 people attend
00:23 our community consultation in person events, there were 8 of those, and yeah, so that's
00:30 10% of people turned out to talk to us and look and get information about the scheme.
00:37 Of those people, just under half of those people gave us written feedback, which was
00:45 238 people, just under half of those were positive, 130 odd people were against the
00:53 scheme. So in terms of its general popularity, yes, from going out to 5,800 people to only
00:59 be looking at 130 odd people in the first place who had concerns, we think that's a
01:04 really positive thing. That being said, those who had concerns did often give us detail
01:13 of those concerns, and we managed to be able to react with some of the 12, 13 visual immediacy
01:19 improvements we made. So it's really encouraging the responses we've had to that as well. Where
01:28 we think it's been sensible to pull away from people's visual aspect, we've done that, and
01:33 we would always encourage people to come forward if they have any other further changes they'd
01:37 like to make in that regard.
01:39 What are some of the myths you've heard around solar farms as well?
01:44 The myths are plentiful, but we find a general good level of education about solar farms.
01:53 There are occasionally myths out there in terms of they're going to massively increase
01:59 flood risk, they are an ecological nightmare, those kind of fears. Obviously, from a perspective
02:12 of the increase in flood risk, that's typically not the case. They neither increase or decrease
02:22 flood risk as a rule. You have a grassed environment underneath the panels which previously were
02:30 often in agricultural fields, so previously would have been subject to ploughing a couple
02:36 of times a year which can create run-off. So, if anything, a slight increase in what
02:42 you would look to absorb water. But there's a lot of planting going on in terms of, say
02:50 for example, this site, we've got 50,000 trees on this site, equally we have the 25
02:59 kilometres of hedgerow, so there's a lot of physical green infrastructure there to
03:08 aid absorption. Another thing on the flooding side is we are investing significant sums
03:15 in looking at flood alleviation schemes for existing flooding issues. It's not to say
03:20 solar farm itself is going to create flooding, it's just that this area is subject to heightened
03:27 flood risk. What would you say to those people who think there's already too many solar
03:31 farm applications in this part of the world? Yeah, it's a fair point that people would
03:37 make, that there are a number of solar applications going in, in Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire
03:42 generally, this wider region. It speaks to the electrical generation past of the area,
03:52 so you have the coal-fired power stations and then in the latter stages the gas-fired
03:57 power stations, all the way up the Trent Valley and therefore the government did make a decision
04:07 some years ago to decommission those coal stations. They need to be replaced with something,
04:13 green power is something they should be replaced with. This area does lend itself well to solar
04:19 development, there are a lot of flat fields which allow screening to take place from the
04:26 solar development, so people are very, very well insulated from the effects. It's not
04:32 to say there are no effects from solar farms, it's to say that those can be very well mitigated
04:38 and it can be very well screened if it's designed well. We think our scheme's designed
04:42 well, we also think other schemes are designed well too. Can you explain about the solar
04:50 farm that's proposed here? I can, yes. It's the Great North Road solar park, it is a one
04:58 gigawatt solar park, it is designed to power the equivalent of 400,000 homes and displace
05:05 250,000 tonnes of carbon emissions. You mentioned screening, what does that mean?
05:11 Screening, yes, by that we don't mean something like a big industrial board at the side of the
05:21 park, we mean that in each field we'll have hedgerow growth that can be native species
05:28 and species mix, it will also mean trees, so it's very much green screening and enhancement
05:36 of existing hedgerows and so on to attract wildlife and existing native species.