To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide a breakdown of the area of (a) prime and (b) other agriculture land that is currently used for renewable energy projects, also broken down by the type of renewable energy project.
The Scottish Government does not hold any data on the area of renewable energy projects, as described.
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero publishes a quarterly Renewable Energy Planning Database (REPD)[1] that lists renewable energy projects at the following stages: inception, planning, construction, operation, and decommissioning. This dataset is limited geographically, in that it provides a single grid reference point for a site. And while it does provide significant data on the planning, commissioning and construction of the site, it provides no information on the area covered - as indicated in this interactive map[2].
Prime land for agriculture is defined by the James Hutton Institute’s Land Capability for Agriculture (LCA) measure[3]. LCA 1 to 3.1 is considered ‘prime’ land suitable for arable production. LCA 3.2 to 7 ranges from land considered suitable for mixed agriculture through to land suitable for various types of grazing.
It is possible to plot renewable energy project sites in relation to land capability for agriculture, but such analysis only gives the number of sites registered on prime agricultural and other agricultural land, not the specific locations of the infrastructure and the areas involved. The Scottish Government has explored this for ground mount solar and onshore wind using 2022 data. For operational onshore wind and ground mount solar the number of sites on different types of land and their generation capacity is shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Onshore Wind and Ground Mount Solar by Land Type, 2022 1
Quality | Technology | Sites | Capacity (MW) |
Prime Land | Ground Mount Solar Photovoltaics | 7 | 37 |
Wind Onshore | 14 | 35 |
Other Land | Ground Mount Solar Photovoltaics | 36 | 213 |
Wind Onshore | 281 | 8206 |
All | | 338 | 8491 |
Note: The definition of Prime and Other land is based on the suitability of land to support different types of agricultural production. It is not necessary that this land is or was utilised for agricultural production prior to the construction of renewable energy sites.
Of a total of 338 sites recorded with onshore wind or ground mount solar photovoltaics in 2022, 21 were registered on prime agricultural land. These accounted for 72 megawatts of a total of 8491 megawatts of capacity.
It is worth noting that until 2021 the minimum threshold for installed capacity in the DESNZ database was 1MW, at which point it was lowered to 150kW. This means that projects below 1MW that were going through planning system before 2021 may not be represented in the REPD. The DESNZ report on renewable electricity capacity and generation in Scotland shows a capacity of 9022 MW for onshore wind in 2022, indicating an underrepresentation[4]. This comparison is not possible with solar photovoltaics as there is no split between ground mount and roof installations in the other dataset.
[1]Renewable Energy Planning Database: quarterly extract - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
[2]Renewable Energy Planning Database | DESNZ & Barbour ABI (barbour-abi.com)
[3]Land Capability for Agriculture (LCA) - James Hutton Institute
[4]Energy Trends: UK renewables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)