Daily Mail
"Farmers are being offered up to £50,000 a year to fill fields with solar panels under a Government-backed green initiative that threatens to change the face of the British countryside.More than 100 planning applications have been submitted and work on a large-scale installation in Wiltshire is due to begin later this month.But with a 30-acre farm able to accommodate up to 18,000 of the 2ft-high panels, campaigners fear some rural areas could be submerged by a sea of black silicon slabs.The ‘Feed-in Tariff’ scheme was launched in April as part of an attempt to meet European Union targets on renewable energy. But the financial incentives are so generous that farmers are being cold-called by developers keen to sign contracts before the payment structure is reviewed in 2012.
The influx is led by German and Chinese companies, but there is also interest from speculators who have seen profits slump since similar schemes were scaled down or abandoned in Spain, Italy and Germany to cut costs.Dustin Benton, senior policy officer at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: ‘There is a real push now by developers to make the most of the short time-window. Solar panels are a useful form of renewable energy but there are many places where they should not go.’
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