Natural Capital Best Practice Guidance
Solar Energy UK has just launched its ‘Natural Capital Best Practice Guidance’ on how to increase biodiversity at all stages of a solar farm’s lifecycle.
For almost a decade, the Eden team has been at the forefront of the solar industry developing solar farms that deliver strong natural capital benefits, tackling the ecological emergency as well as the climate emergency and helping to ensure the nation’s future energy security.
Eden is very pleased that our work designing, implementing and monitoring biodiversity gains at solar farms has informed this important new guidance. We hope it will help local authorities and other solar businesses to understand the critical contribution that well-managed solar projects can make to enable wildflowers, pollinators and other wildlife to thrive; contributing many thousands more acres of high biodiversity habitats across the country; and providing a broad range of benefits for people who live nearby.
The guidance has been endorsed by the National Farmers Union. Dr Jonathan Scurlock, NFU, said: “The NFU strongly encourages developers of solar farms at all scales to follow best practice guidelines for multi-purpose land use – energy production, grazing of small livestock and agri-environmental measures. Building upon our previous work with the growing solar energy sector, the land for solar farms remains classified as agricultural and can revert in the longer term back to agricultural use. Solar Energy UK’s ‘Natural Capital Best Practice Guidance’ shows how solar farms can address simultaneously the climate and biodiversity crises.”