Solar farms are taking over Britain's countryside

This summer I spent an afternoon, as I do every year, sitting with old friends in their garden a few miles from the Gloucestershire village where we grew up. Their garden adjoins fields, affording a clear view of the Malvern Hills. But this year, the view was different. We watched as trucks crawled across the land three fields ahead, shunting between concrete blocks. Little constructions had appeared between the trees and hedges.

I was witnessing the construction of the UK’s largest solar farm in a rural residential area. Some 26 fields, comprising 271 acres of farmland near the village of Highleadon are being turned into a photovoltaic power station with ground-mounted solar panels and substations for inverters and batteries.

1,300 solar farms already operational, and another 2,783 are